Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

HERIOT-WATT COLLEGE ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Considered; to be read the Third time Tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES (MOUNT SCOPUS)

Mr. Longden: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the talks about the condition of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery on Mount Scopus, to which he referred in his reply to the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire on 31st May last, have culminated in a mutually agreeable solution; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. George Thomson): The discussions to which my hon. Friend referred in his reply to the hon. Gentleman on 31st May are still continuing. Since then I have visited the cemetery and discussed the problem with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation in Jerusalem. It would be unhelpful at this stage, on a matter which I know the hon. Member has deeply at heart, if I were to say more than that I still hope to find a solution acceptable to all parties.

Mr. Longden: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply, but this matter has been going on for a very long time. Under the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan, did not both Governments agree to free access to

Mount Scopus? Which of these two Governments is frustrating the carrying out of this duty that we owe to Commonwealth troops who fell in he First World War?

Mr. Thomson: The hon. Gentleman has been very patient and I appreciate his sense of the time this has taken. But a solution must command the agreement of both Jordan and Israel. I have tried to carry it forward by seeing things for myself on the spot. I should like to tell the hon. Gentleman, and other hon. Members who are interested, that, despite the long period of neglect of the cemetery, I found that the great majority of the headstones are in a good state of Considered; to be read the Third time preservation and that the cemetery as a whole still retains a simple and moving dignity.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED NATIONS (SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS)

Mr. Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government regarding observance of resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. George Thomson: The policy of Her Majesty's Government is to give effect to any resolutions adopted by the Security Council for which they have voted, subject to any reservations they may have expressed in debate.

Mr. Blaker: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that, a year ago, the Prime Minister criticised the previous Government for not carrying out part of a Security Council resolution for which they had voted even though they had expressed reservations at the time? Since the present Government now have adopted the same practice in relation to Rhodesia, will the hon. Gentleman ask the Foreign Secretary to invite the Prime Minister to eat those words?

Mr. Thomson: A great deal depends on the particular reservations and the substance to which they are related. Any Government are bound, in the light of reservations expressed during debate, to act according to those reservations.

Oral Answers to Questions — VIETNAM

Lord Balniel: asked the Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the discussions he has had with the Soviet Government about the possibility of the British and Soviet Governments, as joint Co-Chairmen, recalling the Geneva Conference on Vietnam.

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what consultations he had with the Soviet authorities on the 1954 Geneva Agreements; and to what extent he gave assurances that Her Majesty's Government considers itself bound by these agreements.

Mr. George Thomson: I will, with permission, answer this Question and Question No. 11 together.
My right hon. Friend has already made a statement about his discussion of Vietnam with the Soviet Government to whom he reiterated his proposal for joint action by the British and Soviet Governments in discharge of their responsibilities as Co-Chairmen of the 1954 Geneva Conference.

Lord Balniel: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we regret the hardening of the Soviet attitude on Vietnam which seems to have followed so soon after the Foreign Secretary's visit? What did the Foreign Secretary expect to achieve at the conference on the question of Vietnam? In particular, what reason had the right hon. Gentleman for believing that the Soviet Government would be prepared to take any public as opposed to private initiative in trying to reach a solution?

Mr. Thomson: My right hon. Friend simply takes the attitude that the dangers inherent in the possibility of escalation of the Vietnam war are so great that no appropriate opportunity should be missed to try to get away from the battlefield to the conference table. Obviously, there would have been widespread regret on both sides of the House if he had gone to Moscow and not made the efforts he did.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Zilliacus.

Mr. Zilliacus: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Question No. 11, tabled by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Zilliacus), was answered with

No. 4. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not know. Mr. Soames.

Mr. Soames: Will the Minister of State appreciate that we on this side are much grieved to hear of the Foreign Secretary's illness? Will the hon. Gentleman be so kind as to express on our behalf good wishes to the Foreign Secretary for a quick recovery?
Can the Minister of State say whether the Foreign Secretary is of the view that sufficient work was done in advance of his visit to Moscow to make more fruitful the possibility of agreement between ourselves and the Soviet Union on any move by the Soviet Government to reach a settlement?

Mr. Thomson: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words and good wishes to my right hon. Friend.
I am wholly satisfied that every possible step was taken in regard to preparatory work, and I do not think that the fact that the Soviet Government are not yet able to accede to our invitation to reactivate the co-chairmanship is due to lack of preparation but to difficulties which face the Soviet Union itself in these problems.

Mr. Zilliacus: Will my hon. Friend answer the second part of my Question? Did her Majesty's Government make it clear that they are still bound by the 1954 Geneva Agreements to consider that Vietnam is one country, and that a final settlement must include the unification of the whole country and the right of the peoples of the two parts to decide on their mutual relations without outside interference? Would not the Government be more effective in this matter if they linked their support for the American war with a satisfactory assurance that the United States is really prepared to conclude peace on that basis?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Supplementaries are getting too long. Mr. Thomson.

Mr. Thomson: I can assist my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester. Gorton (Mr. Zilliacus) and other hon. Members on this question. Full particulars of British obligations under the 1954 Geneva Agreements and the efforts made by successive British Governments to ensure that those Agreements are implemented will be found in a blue book


which we are laying before Parliament, tomorrow, entitled "Documents Relating to British Involvement in the Indo-China Conflict 1945–56."

Mr. Warbey: Can my hon. Friend say whether those documents will include the secret pact, which Sir Anthony Eden signed with Mr. John Foster Dulles and M. Mendes-France in 1954, providing for the partition of Vietnam and the retention of the southern part under Western control, and can he say whether that is still the basis of British policy towards Vietnam?

Mr. Thomson: Without accepting the premise on which my hon. Friend's questions are based, I could not answer his detailed point without notice.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will seek to have new discussions with the Government of the United States of America, in pursuance of Her Majesty's Government's policy in seeking peace in Vietnam, in order to prevent further extension of the bombing of North Vietnam.

Mrs. Joyce Butler: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will seek discussions with the United States Government in order to promote an armistice in Vietnam.

Mr. George Thomson: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will, naturally, be discussing Vietnam during his visit to President Johnson. He will be concerned with promoting peace—which is opposed in Hanoi and not in Washington—rather than with the detailed conduct of the war.

Mr. Allaun: As the choice is now between negotiation and spreading the war through the whole of South-East Asia, will the Government press Washington to accept the 1954 Agreement? Has my hon. Friend seen today's report by James Cameron that the Prime Minister of North Vietnam is insisting on such acceptance?

Mr. Thomson: I have not read today's report to which my hon. Friend refers, but I have read the other reports from the same source. The fact is that the opposition to bringing the parties to the conference table comes, beyond any reasonable doubt, from North Vietnam,

and that is the obstacle to avoiding the danger to which my hon. Friend rightly draws attention.

Mrs. Butler: Will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to impress on the United States Government the increasing outrage felt by people here at the savage developments in Vietnam and the fact that many of us in the House who would feel obliged publicly to dissociate ourselves from any extension of the war would welcome acceptance by the United States Government of the proposed Christmas truce and its extension into an armistice which would give an opportunity for saner policies to be adopted?

Mr. Thomson: In all quarters of the country and of the world there is abhorrence of the kind of cruelty and terrors which are involved in modern war, but the only way to avoid these dangers is to end the war itself and bring negotiations about. This has been the Government's constant aim. We very much welcome the Christmas truce proposed by the North Vietnam authorities. It is a very short truce. We would hope that it could be extended to a length sufficient to allow the possibility of real negotiations to take place.

Mr. Doughty: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his last answer and agree with it, but will he also express the thanks of the free world to the United States for the very great efforts it is making to stop the Far East going Communist?

Mr. Thomson: The views of Her Majesty's Government have been made plain repeatedly by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. I simply repeat that I think that there is general agreement that the important thing to concentrate on is bringing this war to an honourable end, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will certainly be talking about this in Washington.

Mr. Orme: While allowing for what he has just said, may I ask my hon. Friend to impress upon the Prime Minister that any extension of this war by the United States, which would include China and the rest of South-East Asia, would be deplored, and it is a matter not just of Hanoi not wanting to negotiate but of the continual extension of the war in Vietnam by the Americans?

Mr. Thomson: I know that there are deeply and sincerely held opinions about this war in various parts of the House and a deep desire to bring peace about. But I remind my hon. Friends who feel deeply about it that the obstacle to peace at the moment is the refusal of the North Vietnamese to come to the conference table.

Oral Answers to Questions — U.S.S.R. (FOREIGN SECRETARY'S VISIT)

Mr. Alison: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent the prospects of a nuclear non-proliferation agreement have been improved following his recent visit to Moscow.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Walter Padley): I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement which ray right hon. Friend made to the House on 6th December.

Mr. Alison: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that an article in Izvestia on 5th December has somewhat dispelled the note of optimism sounded in that communiqué? Would he now agree that the best way of securing any agreement with the Russians is to reckon that they will be stalling on this issue until we have completed our own arrangements within N.A.T.O.?

Mr. Padley: No, Sir, I would not accept that. As my right hon. Friend made a detailed statement a week ago and was questioned in detail and as we are led to believe that he will be opening a foreign affairs debate one week today, I urge the hon. Gentleman and the House as a whole to await the foreign affairs debate.

Mr. Soames: Will the hon. Gentleman say whether when his right hon. Friend left Moscow he brought away the impression that the Russians were genuinely seeking a non-proliferation treaty, or was it that they did not think that the time was yet ripe for a non-proliferation treaty but were using the arguments going on in N.A.T.O. as an excuse for not proceeding towards such a treaty?

Mr. Padley: As my right hon. Friend made clear a week ago, he came away from Moscow with the impression that it was worth while going on with the

negotiations in the Eighteen-Nation Committee. Even that was not sure before he went to Moscow, so that I think that the House will agree that his visit was very welcome and fruitful.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANISATION (NUCLEAR WEAPONS)

Mr. Alison: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government towards nuclear-sharing in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, in the light of the recent meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Defence Ministers.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will state his policy on nuclear-sharing within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

Mr. Padley: Her Majesty's Government's policy is to strengthen the cohesion and security of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation by associating the non-nuclear members more closely with the arrangements for the Western deterrent while precluding any dissemination of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Alison: I thank the lion. Gentleman for that general Answer, but can he tell us in particular whether the Government's proposals for an A.N.F. were raised in Paris at the Ministerial meeting which I have mentioned, or, if not, why not?

Mr. Padley: Yes. The British proposals for an A.N.F. are still on the table in all the discussions in N.A.T.O. No doubt they will be discussed next week. But we do not regard Mr. McNamara's proposal for a special committee and the British proposal for an A.N.F. as being in any way contradictory. They are alternative methods—perhaps complementary methods—of solving the same problem.

Mr. Griffiths: As the Government's proposals for an A.N.F. are likely to stay on the table, would not the hon. Gentleman agree that the time is ripe to press ahead with the proposals for nuclear sharing recently put forward by Mr. McNamara and endorsed by my


right hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Soames) in his speech at Western European Union?

Mr. Padley: It has been made quite clear that Her Majesty's Government fully support Mr. McNamara's proposal, but this does not mean that other proposals cannot be discussed this week and in the coming months. We want a successful conclusion to this problem of achieving both nuclear sharing on the one hand and non-proliferation on the other. I should have thought that the whole House would have been agreed on that.

Mr. Freeson: Will my hon. Friend explain how negotiations on nuclear snaring, as it is now described, are compatible with the Labour Party policy of trying to establish a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe?

Mr. Padley: That question has been asked and answered in the House many times. Of course, we support a nuclear-free zone in Europe, providing that there are taken into account not only the missiles which are located in particular areas, but also the warheads which are targeted on particulars areas. In that sense, as a long-term objective, the policy of a nuclear-free zone remains, but nothing in our A.N.F. proposals and nothing in Mr. McNamara's proposals stands in the way of that ultimate objective.

Mr. Soames: In view of the number of meetings which are to take place in Paris and Washington, can the hon. Gentleman say whether the Government at this point of time favour a solution to the nuclear-sharing problem in Europe along the lines of a committee, as advocated by Mr. McNamara, or along the lines of the forces of an A.N.F. or M.L.F.?

Mr. Padley: We do not regard Mr. McNamara's proposals as being in conflict with the British A.N.F. proposals. We hope by democratic discussion to reach an agreed conclusion.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES

Mr. Gordon Campbell: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress has been made in settling the disagreement at the United Nations

about the control and financing of peacekeeping forces.

Mr. George Thomson: There has been no progress towards agreement on the fundamental issues which divide the Soviet bloc and the French from the majority of the members of the United Nations on peace-keeping questions. There has, however, been a full debate of the question at the current session of the Assembly, the outcome of which is a recommendation that the Special Committee set up to review all aspects of peace keeping should continue its work next year in the light of the debate. I am sure that this recommendation, which has not yet been finally approved by the Assembly, provides the best means of making progress in the search for agreement.

Mr. Campbell: Have any countries made or announced voluntary contributions since Britain and certain other countries made their offers this summer?

Mr. Thomson: There is another Question on this subject. Twenty countries have now made contributions.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Would the Minister of State say what is in the Government's mind about proposals concerning the uniting for peace resolution?

Mr. Thomson: We consider that the Security Council has the primary but not exclusive responsibility for peace keeping. We believe that the General Assembly also has a general responsibility to authorise peace-keeping operations whenever the Security Council is unable to act.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA

Mr. Hamling: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) what progress is being made in the implementation of the United Nations resolution on Rhodesia;

(2) what discussions he has had with Foreign Ministers from countries within and outside the Commonwealth on sanctions against Rhodesia.

Mr. Jackson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what representations he has made to the South African and Portuguese Governments seeking their co-operation in imposing


sanctions against the illegal Smith régime in Southern Rhodesia.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what discussions he has had with the Governments of the Republics of France, Spain, Portugal and South Africa regarding their policy towards the Rhodesian problem; and, in particular, whether he has established the extent to which they will co-operate in Her Majesty's Government's policy of sanctions against Rhodesia.

Mr. George Thomson: We have made representations to all Governments with which we have diplomatic relations seeking their support, in accordance with the Security Council resolution of 20th November, for the economic measures we have taken against the illegal régime. We have obtained a very wide measure of support.

Mr. Hamling: Will my hon. Friend tell the House in some detail what proposals the Government have made in this regard?

Mr. Thomson: Perhaps my hon. Friend will excuse me for not going into detail in a supplementary answer when there are a number of other Questions to follow. We have been to all the countries with which we have diplomatic relations and we have had a very good response in terms of an embargo on the main ex ports from Rhodesia.

Mr. Jackson: Can the Minister tell us, in terms of that very good response, what has been the reaction of Portugal and South Africa to their collaboration in possible oil sanctions?

Mr. Thomson: Yes, Sir. The Portuguese Government is considering our representations. It has not recognised the illegal régime in Rhodesia and has said that it has no wish to obstruct communications with Zambia. The South African Government has not recognised Rhodesian independence, but has said that it will maintain normal intercourse with Rhodesia. We are continuing to make diplomatic representations to both those Governments.

Mr. Farr: In view of the desirability of settling this matter within the Com-

monwealth if possible, would the hon. Gentleman be good enough to confirm that every attention will be paid to the Prime Minister of Nigeria's visit to London this week to see if a Commonwealth initiative cannot be launched on this?

Mr. Thomson: Yes, indeed. We very warmly wecome the distinguished Prime Minister of Nigeria who is coming to this country tomorrow and we hope that discussions between the Prime Minister and Her Majesty's Government will be fruitful.

Mr. William Hamilton: Can my hon. Friend say how many countries have fully implemented the United Nations resolution or have given an indication that they intend to do so? Can he further say what pressures Her Majesty's Government are bringing to bear on those countries which have indicated, by one means or another, that they do not wish to follow the resolution?

Mr. Thomson: I do not think that the matter can be defined easily in the terms in which my hon. Friend has put it, because the United Nations resolution covered a number of matters, including an oil embargo, on which it has not been possible to gain international agreement in its implementation. The greater number of countries with whom we have friendly relations have taken positive action in support of the measures we have carried out.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Concerning the United Nations resolution on Rhodesia and the reservations made by Her Majesty's Government that this resolution did not come under Chapter VII of the Charter, can the Minister of State say whether Her Majesty's Government consider that it comes under Chapter VI?

Mr. Thomson: These questions relating to the United Nations Charter sometimes have a theological quality to them. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister put the matter exactly when he said that, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, this particular resolution came somewhere between Chapters VI and VII.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRINCESS MARGARET (VISIT TO UNITED STATES)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why he gave his consent to the visit of Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret to the United States of America being made official.

Sir G. de Freitas: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when he gave his consent to the visit of Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret to the United States of America being made official; and what official duties he advised her to perform.

Mr. George Thomson: My right hon. Friend agreed in principle to the visit last January, after he had been told that Her Royal Highness had received a private invitation to visit the United States. In fact, the desirability of an official visit to the United States by a member of the Royal Family either during the autumn of this year or the spring of next year, had been agreed long before Her Royal Highness's private plans became known.
It was decided to ask Her Royal Highness to undertake an official programme on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, combining this with her own private arrangements, and an official invitation to visit the United States was conveyed to Her Royal Highness on 29th April.
The official duties, arranged in consultation with Her Majesty's Ambassador in Washington, included several Press conferences, civil receptions, attendance at displays of British goods, visits to universities, museums and schools, attendance at charity functions and at receptions for British communities as well as American personalities.
In the event the visit consisted mainly of official and public functions. In the view of Her Majesty's Government it was an outstanding success.

Mr. Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend aware that that Answer is not very satisfactory? Can he say whether the official visit revolved round the private visit or vice versa? Can he say whether all the official engagements which originally came from the Foreign Office were accepted by Her Royal Highness in toto?

Mr. Thomson: I am glad to be able to give my hon. Friend information on both of these points in view of the considerable public misrepresentation which there has been.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Far from objecting to any of these suggestions for official engagements made by our Ambassador in Washington, as was suggested in the New Statesman on 3rd December, Princess Margaret proposed a number of additional engagements. The visit took 20 days. Fourteen of those days were entirely taken up with public engagements and during this period more than 60 official and public functions were undertaken.

Sir G. de Freitas: Is the Minister of State aware that there are many hon. Members on this side of the House who would agree that it is just about time that the Foreign Office made a statement which showed that Princess Margaret had really tried to do even more than she was asked?

Mr. Frederic Harris: Does the Minister agree that it is about time that some hon. Members on his own side stopped sniping at Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon?

Mr. Speaker: Order. It would not have been in order for any hon. Member to snipe at Princess Margaret. There is a Parliamentary way of making any criticisms of the Royal Family.

Mr. Hamilton: On a point of order. There is a Parliamentary way of raising this matter on the Adjournment, and I propose to do so at the earliest opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions — DISARMAMENT

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of the fact that the admission of Western Germany to any form of participation in any kind of international nuclear force would make it impossible to reach agreement with the Soviet Union on a treaty to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, or on disarmament and disengagement, the establishment of a nuclear weapon free zone in central Europe, or the unification of Germany, if he will now give priority to the need


for diminishing tension, disarmament and a political settlement in Europe.

Mr. Padley: As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in reply to my hon. Friend on 2nd November, Her Majesty's Government's policy is both to achieve progress towards agreement on non-dissemination and disarmament, and to work actively with our allies to ensure our effective collective defence. Our aim is to achieve both these objectives in harmony.

Mr. Zilliacus: Does my hon. Friend recall that on 23rd November last year the Prime Minister said that any measure for strengthening collective defence which made agreement with the Soviet Union on these matters more difficult was no longer appropriate? Is it not clear by now that any form of associating Western Germany with any kind of international nuclear force would be a fatal obstacle to reaching agreement with the Soviet Union in these matters?

Mr. Padley: I have nothing to add to the replies of the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, already given to my hon. Friend on this Question.

Mr. Ioan L. Evans: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what plans he intends to put forward to promote disarmament.

Mr. Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what initiatives Her Majesty's Government intend to take to promote progress in disarmament.

Mr. Padley: I would refer hon. Members to what my right hon. Friend said in answer to a Question by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) on 22nd November. The Government intend to make a determined effort to reach agreement on preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons and on the extension of the partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to cover underground tests.

Mr. Evans: While agreeing that priority should be given to a treaty to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, may I ask my hon. Friend what further measures his Department is preparing in view of the proposal by the United Nations Organisation to convene a world conference on disarmament? Does my hon. Friend realise that at

present more is being spent on arms in the world than the total national income of Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Mr. Padley: The Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee has been reconvened largely on British initiative. My hon. Friend can remain satisfied that the Government will take a full part, both at Geneva and at New York, in promoting disarmament measures.

Mr. Blaker: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Foreign Secretary claimed last week, presumably by mistake, that the present Government had put forward to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee four new proposals which had not been put forward by the previous Government? Will he take this opportunity to correct the record? Have they put forward any new proposals at all?

Mr. Padley: I think that the hon. Gentleman might raise that matter in the debate on foreign affairs which we hope to have next week.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Will my hon. Friend recognise that the summoning of this disarmament conference for 1967 is a new fact and that it is urgently important that Her Majesty's Government should prepare proposals which go beyond the very limited partial measures now under consideration.

Mr. Padley: I fully accept that.

Mr. Soames: Will not the hon. Gentleman agree that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Blaker) is absolutely right and that in fact nothing has been achieved by the Minister for Disarmament in the whole of this year? Can the hon. Gentleman give one achievement? What is the Minister doing in Japan., in view of the fact that the hon. Gentleman said a few minutes ago that the Foreign Secretary had agreed everything with the Japanese Government already?

Mr. Padley: My noble Friend the Minister of State with special responsibility for disarmament has done a very constructive job—[HON. MEMBERS:
"Oh"]—yes—by expanding the disarmament section of the Foreign Office —[Interruption.]—by his participation in the discussions in Geneva and by his participation in the discussions in New York.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: Is my hon. Friend aware that neither of the two measures which he mentioned is in fact a disarmament measure and that no sign has been given of any recognition by Her Majesty's Government that unless nations are offered security they will not give up their arms?

Lord Balniel: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that not only has there been no achievement, as referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Soames), but there has been no constructive new initiative since the Government came to office? May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether, in the light of reports of scientific advance in detection, he is thinking of actively resuming negotiations with a view to extending the last Administration's test ban treaty so as to cover underground tests?

Mr. Padley: My original Answer gave a positive response to the final part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question. The plain fact is that, in the early months of the Government's period of office, other powers were not prepared to agree to a reconvening of the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee at Geneva. With the Foreign Secretary, I spent days last March seeking to convince Mr. Gromyko that this should be done. Obviously one has to reactivate machinery before one puts forward specific proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTH ATLANTIC COMMUNITY

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what plans he has for taking new initiatives to strengthen the North Atlantic Community.

Mr. Padley: My right hon. Friend was hoping to attend the Ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation this week and to have discussions with his colleagues on the strength and cohesion of the alliance. He will not now be able to do so because of illness. But my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Defence and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be attending.

Mr. Ridsdale: Why are the Government being so complacent about pressing ahead with the Kennedy Round of tariffs? The Minister is surely aware that without the Kennedy Round the division

of Europe into two discriminatory trading blocs will have serious repercussions? What has been done about this?

Mr. Padley: I confess that I am a little surprised at the relationship of the Kennedy Round to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Personally I am strongly in favour of both.

Oral Answers to Questions — JAPAN (FOREIGN SECRETARY'S VISIT)

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on his recent visit to Japan.

Mr. Padley: My right hon. Friend visited Japan in October to take part in the fourth round of the regular AngloJapanese consultations which are held alternately in London and Tokyo at Ministerial level. He had discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and they found themselves in agreement on almost all issues. At the close of his visit a joint communiqué was issued—and a copy was placed in the Library of the House on 3rd November—describing the success of the consultations and the valuable contribution they made to the maintenance of good relations with Japan.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the Minister aware how encouraging it is to find agreements like this being made with an Asian Power, in view of the present difficulties in Asia and Africa?

Oral Answers to Questions — YEMEN

Mr. Jackson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent Her Majesty's Government's policy of recognition of the royalist régime in the Yemen has been affected by the talks regarding the formation of a new interim régime there.

Mr. George Thomson: Her Majesty's Government hope that a régime representing both sides in the Yemen will emerge from the present talks, but I understand that the Haradh Conference has not yet reached agreement. According to our established practice, the recognition of the Royalist Government is bound to continue until there is an alternative régime which fulfils our criteria for recognition.

Mr. Jackson: While thanking the Minister of State for that Answer, may I ask him to indicate whether, should such a coalition Government emerge as a result of these talks, it is possible that relations between Sana and Aden would be improved, because of the domestic preoccupations of the new coalition government?

Mr. Thomson: I have very much in mind the point made by my hon. Friend. I hope that the first sentence of my Answer gave an indication of our positive attitude towards the attempts for a Yemeni settlement, now being made.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: While we must all hope for the success of the Haradh conference, may I ask the hon. Gentleman if all that has happened in the Yemen does not show how right a Conservative Administration was to continue to recognise the Imam's Government and how right Her Majesty's present Government are to continue this policy?

Mr. Thomson: I think that we can leave who was right and wrong in the past if only we can get some sort of decent settlement for the future.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALLIED TRAVEL OFFICE, BERLIN (EAST GERMANS)

Mr. Newens: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will enter into discussions with other members of the North Atlantic Alliance with a view to making it possible for East German citizens to travel to the West in compassionate cases without recourse to the West Berlin Travel Office.

Mr. Padley: The whole question of travel by East Germans to Western countries is kept under constant review in the North Atlantic Council. Following recent discussions by the Council the Allied Travel Office in Berlin issued the following statement on 10th December:
In view of the great number of applications by pensioners from the Soviet Zone, the competent authorities have decided to introduce a simplified procedure to facilitate the entry of per sioners into North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries. This procedure fully conforms to the present rules for the entry of Germans from the Soviet Zone into North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries. Pensioners who wish to travel to Western countries are asked to apply for visas at the competent Visa Office of the State they propose to

visit. They are reminded that each country has differing requirements and therefore applicants should contact the appropriate national authorities concerned for detailed information before submitting an application.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Other Departments have made shorter Answers than that.

Mr. Newens: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, which goes some way—[HON. MEMBERS: "A long way."] —to meet some of the difficulties which my constituent experienced, may I ask him whether he agrees that, in the case which I referred to the Foreign Office, people in the Eastern Zone were prevented from visiting the West, not by the East German Government, bat by these very antiquated and now out-of-date regulations?

Mr. Padley: No, I cannot accept that.
Perhaps I might say, with respect, that it was impossible to answer my hon. Friend's Question, except by making a direct quotation from the document which was agreed by Her Majesty's Government with her allies. May I say to my hon. Friend that the main obstacle to pensioners or anyone else leaving East Germany consists in the nature of the East German régime and not in any regulations relating to visas.

Oral Answers to Questions — PASSPORTS

Mr. Buxton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make available, as an alternative, passports containing a larger number of pages to avoid the need for constant issue of new passports to those who have to travel frequently abroad.

Mr. George Thomson: No, Sir. I am satisfied there is insufficient demand to justify the administrative difficulties which would be involved in offering an alternative passport containing more than the present 32 pages. Only a fraction of 1 per cent. of the 700,000 issued annually are in replacement of passports which have become full before their date of expiry. Special ararngements exist for business men whose passports become full of visas to obtain a fresh passport quickly and with the minimum formality.

Mr. Buxton: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that there are only 27 effective pages of a passport, not 32, which


can be used for visas? This is a matter of great inconvenience to overseas salesmen and people connected with the overseas drive?

Mr. Thomson: The Board of Trade, under the Conservative Administration, carried out a survey in 1963 which showed that there was very little demand among businessmen for a larger pasport. A larger passport would also involve a larger fee.

Oral Answers to Questions — SUEZ CANAL (GOODS FOR RHODESIA)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what representations have been made to the United Arab Republic about that country's decision to prevent the passage of goods for Rhodesia through the Suez Canal.

Mr. Thomson: The position remains as described in my reply on 29th November to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall). So far as I am aware, no goods have been confiscated by the United Arab Republic authorities in this connection.

Mr. Allaun: But is it not a fact that the U.A.R. has given such instructions to the canal authorities? Will Her Majesty's Government support such measures, particularly as the Security Council is meeting today to consider strengthening economic sanctions?

Mr. Thomson: There is another Question on the possibility of the Security Council taking further action. The resolution of 20th November did not include anything which could be taken as referring to stopping the transit of goods through the canal, and I have no knowledge of any such instructions having been issued by the U.A.R. Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — SPAIN (GIBRALTAR)

Mr. Dance: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the present state of relations between Gibraltar and Spain, with particular regard to movement between the two countries over the La Linea border.

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a further statement on the present relations between Gibraltar and Spain, and on his plans for bringing that dispute to an end.

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has yet studied the Spanish Government's Red Book; and if, as a result, talks will be held with Spain about the frontier restrictions imposed upon Gibraltar.

Mr. Padley: On 4th December, the Spanish Government published a "Red Book" on Gibraltar. It contains no proposals for talks about the frontier restrictions but indicates that the Spanish Government wish to have negotiations about the whole future of Gibraltar. It consists of over 500 pages and is now under study.
On 7th December, the British representative in voting for a resolution of the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations which invited the United Kingdom and Spain to begin without delay talks about Gibraltar, made it clear that Her Majesty's Government remain ready to entertain proposals for such talks as soon as a normal situation is restored on the frontier.
As regards movement between Gibraltar and Spain I have nothing to add to the reply given to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) on 28th October.

Mr. Dance: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that life in the past for the people of Gibraltar has been extremely difficult and that, if this border question persists in the future, life will become intolerable? Does he agree that stronger action should be taken with the Spanish Government now so as to give some encouragement to the people of Gibraltar that their future will be a little more comfortable?

Mr. Padley: I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman in his expression of solidarity with the loyal British subjects of Gibraltar. Her Majesty's Government have given substantial economic and technical assistance to make the Gibraltar economy viable in the face of threats from Spain. We have not, up to now, taken the view that action other than action designed to build up a strong Gibraltar


economy was the practical policy to pursue, and this remains our view, although, if some of the statements and threats contained in the Red Book were carried out, we might revise our view.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Does my hon. Friend realise that his view should not be fogged by the Red Book to which he has referred so much and that a settlement of this dispute is anxiously awaited by thousands of British citizens as well as by many Gibraltarians whose trade, industry and commerce, including the tourist trade, depend on a settlement at a very early date? Will he make clear that he stands by the solidarity of the British position?

Mr. Padley: The answer to that is, Yes.

Mr. Fisher: Will the hon. Gentleman recognise that these frontier restrictions have been in operation now for well over a year, to the grave prejudice of the people of Gibraltar, and through no fault of theirs? Has not the time come for Her Majesty's Government to take some political as opposed to economic initiative to try to resolve the deadlock?

Mr. Padley: As I have explained on countless occasions in the House, the truth is that we have been taking political initiatives for well over a year.

Mr. Fisher: Very ineffective.

Mr. Padley: I remind the hon. Gentleman, when he says that the restrictions have been in operation since October, 1964, that they go back, at least in my period in the House, to the visit of Her Majesty the Queen in 1954.

Mr. Albert Roberts: Does my hon. Friend think that the Spanish Government are doing something which they should not do in imposing these measures at the frontier?

Mr. Padley: We have repeatedly made clear that we think that before there can be talks as called for by the resolution of the Fourth Committee of the United Nations, these restrictions at the frontier must be raised. So the answer to that question is, Yes.

Mr. Soames: Have Her Majesty's Government had any reaction from the Spanish Government to the United Nations resolution and to the words of

Her Majesty's Government's representative at the United Nations? If the answer to that is "No", will the hon. Gentleman make representations to the Spanish Government to the effect that Her Majesty's Government would like to hear what their reactions are?

Mr. Padley: Seven weeks ago, Her Majesty's ambassador in Madrid had discussions with the Spanish Foreign Minister, but, up to now, we have had no response to those discussions. There has not been time since the latest discussions at the United Nations for a further exchange of views.

Oral Answers to Questions — LATIN AMERICA (VISIT OF FOREIGN SECRETARY)

Mr. A. Royle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what plans he has to visit Latin America.

Mr. Padley: My right hon. Friend plans to visit Peru from 2nd to 6th January next, Chile from 6th to 10th January, and Argentina from 10th to 14th January.

Mr. Royle: In view of the very close relations between Peru and this country, will the hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend to discuss with the Peruvian Government the possibility of increasing aid to Peru and also the possibility of giving more assistance to the British V.S.O.s working in the barriadas outside Lima?

Mr. Padley: I shall draw those points to my right hon. Friend's attention.

Mr. Dell: Would it not be an encouragement to the success of the Foreign Secretary's visit if the Government now announced their intention to implement the recommendations of the Parry Committee on Latin-American Studies?

Mr. Padley: My hon. Friend had better put down a separate Question if he wants a reply to that.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY (VICTIMS OF NAZI PERSECUTION)

Sir B. Janner: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Federal German Government, in a budgetary balance Bill now


under consideration by the Bundestag, proposes to postpone for two years payment of a considerable part of the compensation accorded to victims of Nazi persecution, some of whom had to wait more than 20 years for the recognition of their claims; and if he will convey to the Federal German Government the feeling in this country that, on humanitarian grounds and in view of the undertakings of the Bonn/Paris Convention, the compensation payments should not be subjected to budgetary curtailment.

Mr. George Thomson: While I have every sympathy for those victims of Nazi persecution who will have to wait still longer for their compensation, the timing of the payments is a matter for the Federal German Government.

Sir B. Janner: In view of the recent agreement between our country and Western Germany about the manner in which compensation and other matters should be attended to, does not the Minister think that an act of this kind, which defers payment to people who in many cases are very old or on the verge of death and who have been waiting for over 20 years to obtain some kind of recognition, is most regrettable? Will he at least inform the Federal German Government that there are many people both in this country and elsewhere who are deeply disturbed at the action which they propose?

Mr. Thomson: I have expressed my feelings of sympathy in the matter. The Convention which my hon. Friend referred to, the Bonn-Paris Convention, does provide that the capacity of the Federal Republic to pay may be taken into consideration in determining the time and method of compensation, and, therefore, we have no formal standing in the matter.

Mr. Kershaw: Is it not unfortunate that at the first breath of economic difficulty there should be difficulty over these payments by the German Government, and will the hon. Gentleman make representations that this only prolongs episodes which are best forgotten?

Mr. Thomson: Her Majesty's Government will, of course—as always—take into account the feelings expressed in the House this afternoon, and I have no doubt that the concern which has been

expressed on both sides of the House will be widely reported.

Oral Answers to Questions — PORTUGAL (UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION)

Mr. G. Campbell: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what was the reason for the abstentions of the United Kingdom in votes at the United Nations on 23rd November on a resolution adopted by the Security Council asking states to refrain from offering Portugal assistance in connection with her colonial policy.

Mr. George Thomson: The United Kingdom representative abstained on the Security Council resolution of 23rd November on the Portuguese territories because it contained certain provisions which Her Majestys' Government could not accept.

Mr. Campbell: Do not these abstentions, and similar ones during the past year, make nonsense of the jibe on page 22 of the Labour Party's manifesto that Britain was to be found in the ranks of abstentionists on such issues at the United Nations?

Mr. Thomson: No. I do not think so. I think that if the hon. Gentleman examines the record of voting by the present Government at the United Nations during the last 14 months he will find that over the whole range of the activities the Government have been very much more forthright and more decisive than their predecessors. In this particular case the Government's disagreement with Portuguese policy has been made clear repeatedly. We abstained on this matter because some parts of the resolution would have supported the demand for the immediate granting of independence to overseas territories, and since we resist this kind of demand in respect of our own territories we were justified in abstaining on this.

Lady Tweedsmuir: On the question of abstaining from voting for the resolution which referred to internal policies of Colonial Territories, would the Minister of State explain further how it is that successive Governments, including his own, have abstained on questions about Rhodesia, but after U.D.I. they took part


in voting on them? Is it not exactly the same question over independence of Portuguese colonies—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss Rhodesia on a Question about Portugal.

Mr. Thomson: The illegal declaration of independence in Rhodesia created a completely new situation, and we had to act accordingly.

Mr. Campbell: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply to my supplementary question, I give notice that I shall raise the matter at the earliest possible moment.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENKOVSKY PAPERS (PUBLICATION)

Mr. A. Royle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what representations he has received from foreign Governments regarding the publication of the Penkovsky Papers.

Mr. George Thomson: The Soviet Ambassador made representations on 15th Novemier. I pointed out in reply that Her Majesty's Government had no responsibility for or control over what is published by private firms and that we do not go in for censorship.

Mr. Royle: Whilst welcoming the Minister's reply, may I ask whether the matter was raised during the Secretary of State's visit to Moscow? Does he consider, in view of the fact that members of the British Embassy are mentioned in the papers, that the documents are accurate?

Mr. Thomson: With regard to the first part of the supplementary question, the answer is, No. I do not think it is for Her Majesty's Government to express views as to the authenticity of commercially published publications.

Oral Answers to Questions — CAIRO RADIO (PROPAGANDA)

Sir Knox Cunningham: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what reduction there has been in the propaganda directed from Cairo Radio against the United Kingdom and her territories since the Minister of State's visit to Egypt.

Mr. George Thomson: I regret that there has been no reduction in Cairo Radio's propaganda campaign against Her Majesty's Government's policies since my visit to the United Arab Republic.

Sir Knox Cunningham: But can the Minister point to one concrete example of advantage arising from this visit? Would it not have been preferable to have had much more careful diplomatic preparation before the hon. Member went to Egypt?

Mr. Thomson: No. Although there may be many criticisms in connection with my visit to the United Arab Republic, I think that lack of preparation is scarcely one of them. It was certainly prepared for over a very long time, and delayed on many occasions. The United Arab Republic is a very important nation in the Middle East, and I think it is not a good thing that, over a long period, this country should have less than normal relations with her. I think it was worth trying. I think it is worth going on trying.

Oral Answers to Questions — CYPRUS

Mr. Dodds-Parker: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what proposals he is making to resolve the Cyprus problem.

Mr. Padley: The Cyprus question is now being debated at the United Nations General Assembly. We must await the outcome of that debate, which we hope will pave the way for further progress towards a solution.

Mr. Dodds-Parker: In view of the reports of lessened tension in that part of the world, may I ask the Government to take some initiative at this moment to see whether we can reduce our considerable commitments in the area?

Mr. Padley: Pending the outcome of the U.N.O. discussions, I think it would be premature for the Government to seek an initiative of any kind.

Oral Answers to Questions — REPUBLIC OF SOMALIA (DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS)

Mr. James Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress is being made towards resumption of diplomatic relations with the Republic of Somalia.

Mr. George Thomson: As my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said in another place on 2nd December, we remain ready to resume relations at any time. But we have no indication as yet that the Somali Government wish to do so.

Mr. Johnson: Will my hon. Friend accept my view that there is a dangerous vacuum in the Horn of Africa despite the fact that the Somalis have enormous good will for us? Would he at least consider establishing a consulate in Mogadishu so that instead of the Americans doing our job there for us, and the Italians doing the Somalis' job here for them, we could do it ourselves?

Mr. Thomson: My hon. Friend, as always, makes a constructive suggestion, and if the Somali Government were in fact to ask Her Majesty's Government to appoint a consul in Mogadishu as a preliminary to full resumption of relations we would be ready to consider that.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHINA (UNITED NATIONS REPRESENTATION)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will now propose in the Security Council of the United Nations that the representative of Nationalist China be refused further admission to the meetings of the Security Council and that the Chinese People's Republic be invited to send a representative to take the seat of China.

Mr. George Thomson: No, Sir. As I told my hon. Friend on 15th November, Her Majesty's Government consider that the right organ of the United Nations in which decisions of principle about a change in Chinese representation should be taken is the General Assembly. As a result of the vote taken in the General Assembly on 17th November on this subject no change in representation has taken place.

Mr. Warbey: Is my hon. Friend aware that it has previously been stated that the Government are, in principle, in favour of the Chinese People's Republic occupying the seats of China in all the organs of the United Nations, and what is to stop the Government from taking an

initiative in the Security Council which has its own procedural rules in this matter?

Mr. Thomson: My hon. Friend is quite right that the Security Council and the General Assembly are separate organs of the United Nations and that the decisions of the former are not binding on the latter. Nevertheless, I think it is the right view of the relations between the Assembly and the Security Council that the General Assembly should remain the appropriate organ of the United Nations for reaching decisions of principle about changes in China's representation.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED STATES (TRADE MISSION'S VISIT)

Sir H. Harrison: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will give details of the circumstances of the failure of Her Majesty's Consulate Office in New York to make the proper arrangements for a group of Midland exporters for the sale of their products; and if he will take steps to see this does not happen in the future.

Mr. Bradley: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is aware of the failure of British Consulates in America to facilitate the recent trade mission of the Leicester and County Chamber of Commerce in their efforts to promote the exports of local industries; and if he will take steps to ensure that future missions from Great Britain receive adequate assistance.

Mr. Peel: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware of the breakdown in the arrangements made by the Consular representative in New York to enable a party of Leicester businessmen to promote exports to the United States of America recently; and what action he proposes to take to ensure that such obstacles to the promotion of exports do not occur again.

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of recent complaints of lack of help to British businessmen in New York, he will ensure that British embassies and consulates overseas are instructed to afford every assistance to firms wishing to export British products to the countries to which they are accredited.

Mr. Padley: I have investigated the criticisms made of the arrangements for this visit and conclude that there were certain shortcomings in the organisation of the mission's programme in New York. These were due mainly to the failure of the Leicester Chamber of Commerce to provide adequate information about the mission's requirements, but partly also to some lack of co-ordination between the Leicester Chamber, the British-American Chamber of Commerce, which was in general charge of the arrangements, and the Consulate-General. The Consulate-General which was brought in at a very late stage has already expressed regret. I am glad to say that arrangements for the visits of this Mission to Los Angeles and Chicago appear to have been satisfactory and the tour of the United States in general to have been regarded as successful.
The criticisms expressed by the Leicester Chamber are notably at variance with the many tributes paid by exporters of wide experience including other export missions, who have found our staff, whether at New York or elsewhere, efficient and helpful. As hon. Members will know, commercial work is now a first charge on the resources of the Diplomatic Service. It is up to individual export missions to brief themselves in good time on the markets which they propose to visit and to let chambers of commerce and our posts abroad know their requirements well in advance.

Sir H. Harrison: Does not the Minister of State know full well that he is really whitewashing the whole of this affair and that there is a cause for great complaint? Surely it is the job of our embassies abroad to know when these missions are coming and to go ahead and consult. The hon. Gentleman ought to investigate this matter a great deal further than it appears he has done from the reply that he has given today. Will he consider whether the time has arrived when, on a short-term basis, we should have some men in our commercial embassies overseas who have had experience in selling?

Mr. Padley: My noble Friend the Minister of State at the Board of Trade is an industrialist of considerable experience. I am a trade unionist of considerable experience. Both of us have investigated the whole of the facts of this situ-

ation and, while we are ready to acknowledge that there was some fault on the part of the Consulate-General, we believe that there was equal fault at least on the part of the Leicester and County Chamber of Commerce in not responding to an earlier request for advance information of the visit of the mission. I would like to say to the House that——

Mr. Farr: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is not this laborious pontification from the Government Front Bench entirely out of order and against your wishes in this connection?

Mr. Speaker: I will not deal with that point of order at the moment.

Mr. Padley: I was answering three Questions together, and if one divides the length of my reply by three——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Comment on what a right hon. or hon. Gentleman is going to do with a Question takes time. He must answer.

Mr. Padley: The last point that I was going to make was that, in view of the publicity that has attached to the matter, it is worth while remembering that the combined efforts of British industry and the commercial counsellors of the British Embassy in the United States have led to Britain exporting 16 per cent. more to the United States in the first nine months of this year than they did last year.

Mr. Bradley: Is not my hon. Friend aware that there is growing support for the criticisms made by the Leicester and County Chamber of Commerce of our consular services? Will he use this opportunity to introduce a searching inquiry with a view to improving both the structure and the composition of our commercial representation abroad?

Mr. Padley: The searching inquiry was in fact conducted by the Plowden Committee. I must say that it is not only industrialists outside the House but industrialists on both sides of the Chamber who, in discussions with me in recent months, have paid personal tribute to the great improvement that has taken place in the last few years in the commercial services of British embassies abroad.

Mr. Fisher: Will the hon. Gentleman say whether it is true that the consulate


in New York gave no assistance at all to this delegation with briefing on the American market and no assistance to get their goods through the Customs? Those are two particular points. In general, will he ensure that in future all our embassies are given a positive directive to give really knowledgeable and accurate assistance to all exporters, not only to America but all over the world?

Mr. Padley: This is a very complex issue. In fact, the mission was met at the airport by the Anglo-American Joint Chamber of Commerce. If the Anglo-American Joint Chamber of Commerce met the mission, it was certainly not obligatory on an officer of the embassy to meet them.

Mr. Peel: Would not the Minister of State agree that the Leicester Chamber of Commerce replied to all letters received from New York very promptly indeed? If he is not aware of that, will he please look into the matter and check on it? Secondly, will he please examine the liaison between our official representatives abroad and chambers of commerce so that there will not be any breakdown in these arrangements in future?

Mr. Padley: I accept that it is of enormous importance that there should be the utmost co-operation between the commercial services of the Diplomatic Service and British industry. So far as there was any slip-up on the part of the commercial services of the British Diplomatic Service, my original Answer apologised for it. All I emphasised was that a good deal of the fault lay on the other side.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Sir H. Harrison: Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, and particularly as the Foreign Office told me that the Minister would answer on this matter at the end of Questions and he answered during Questions—which shows that his own Department does not know what it is doing—I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment.

Oral Answers to Questions — QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Speaker: Order. Question Time is now over. I will now deal with the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr). I did not take it in Question Time because it would have cost Question time. It would be unfortunate to pinpoint anything that happened today on to one particular Question and Answer. I know that foreign affairs Questions are important, but if we take time over important foreign affairs Questions, supplementary questions and answers, we lose equally important foreign affairs Questions which hon. Gentlemen wish to have answered, so that the same principle ought to guide those who ask and those who answer Questions, even on foreign policy, as upon other days.

Sir G. Nicholson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say that I know that the House will support any effort of yours to keep the speed of Question Time up to the pace that it has reached on other days.

Mr. Speaker: That is a very dangerous carte blanche to give anyone.

F.111A AIRCRAFT

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Denis Healey): On 6th April I informed the House that Her Majesty's Government had no intention of requiring our forces to forgo the aircraft then planned to replace the Canberra towards the end of this decade without making quite certain that they could carry out their operational tasks by other means. I also said that it would not be possible to define these tasks precisely until the Defence Review was completed.
Her Majesty's Government secured from the United States Government an option on the F.111A aircraft under an arrangement which did not require the option to be exercised until the end of this year. The arrangements made also provided that any initial order would be a very small one and that further orders would not be required until April 1967. As I indicated at the time, we wanted to be sure that we would not need to place even an initial order until we had


completed the main work on our Defence Review.
I believe that it would be a mistake to take a decision on the Canberra replacement separately from other major decisions on the future structure of our forces. In any case the House will wish to consider the implications of the Report of the Committee under Lord Plowden, which is to be published this week, before final decisions on the aircraft programme are taken. I have therefore asked Mr. McNamara to postpone the initial F.111A option for two months until 1st March, and I am glad to say that he has agreed to this request. I believe that this change will meet the convenience of the House.

Mr. Powell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Government have been wise to comply with the advice tendered in the Motion placed on the Order Paper last week? May I ask him if the terms of his statement indicate that by 1st March there will be a comprehensive statement by the Government on the defence commitments which they accept and the forces which they consider to be appropriate for fulfilling them?

Mr. Healey: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but I must tell him that I initiated action on the postponement of the option ten days before the Motion to which he refers appeared on the Order Paper.
On his second question, we shall put the most comprehensive statement possible of our future defence policy and the forces structure to support it in next year's Defence White Paper.

Mr. Edelman: Could my right hon. Friend give the House a little more information? When he talks about the F.111A, is he talking about the F.111A Mk. II, and is it not true that the cost of the F.111A Mk. II, which has electronic equipment, is now rising rapidly towards the same price as was quoted last April for the TSR.2?

Mr. Healey: The latter part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question is inaccurate and irrelevant, since it is now unlikely that we shall need to buy any F.111A Mk. II aircraft. The addition of a computer which the Americans are incorporating themselves to the basic

F.111A will give us the performance that we need.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: On 6th April, the right hon. Gentleman was categoric about the necessity for the F.111A Mark II. He now says that it is no longer necessary. Will he make the position more explicit than it appears from his statement?

Mr. Healey: I have explained many times, both in April and since, that there is no such things as an F.111A Mark II. There are varieties of avionic equipment which the Americans themselves are considering putting into the same airframe so that the aircraft can perform different rôles. The particular F.111A aircraft which we propose to buy goes by the industrial name of the "min-min-mod version" and incorporates a new computer which the Americans themselves are using in the aircraft they intend to buy.

Mr. Lubbock: The right hon. Gentleman said that there would be the fullest possible statement of the Government's defence policy in the Defence White Paper next year. Does this mean that the Defence Review which we have been discussing for so many months will not be published as a separate document, but will be part of the Defence White Paper itself? Secondly, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, before a decision is made on a choice between the F.111A and the Spey/Mirage, he will publish a White Paper setting out the relative costs of these two aircraft, the amount of British production that will be incorporated in each, and, as far as security will allow, a comparison of their performances?

Mr. Healey: On the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, perhaps I might tell him that later today my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation will give a good deal of information on the comparison between the Spey/Mirage and other potential Canberra replacements. On the first part of the question, I have made it clear for many months past that the Defence Review conclusions will be published in next year's Defence White Paper.

Mr. Amery: The right hon. Gentleman says that the min-min-mod version will give us the performance that we need. Can he say whether this is the same as that of the TSR.2 replacement, or whether it involves a down-grading?

Mr. Healey: This does not involve any substantial down-grading of the TSR.2's performance, though I must make it clear that in many respects the F.111A is superior to the TSR.2, particularly in radius of action and flexibility.

Mr. R. Carr: The right hon. Gentleman used the words "propose to buy". Was this a Freudian lapse indicating that in fact he had already made up his mind?

Mr. Healey: No, Sir.

Mr. Bishop: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his statement will give some satisfaction to many right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House who, a week ago, requested such an assurance? Will he assure the House in the meantime that he will take all possible steps to seek an alternative to the F.111A if such is necessary?

Mr. Healey: Yes, Sir. I should make it clear that no Minister of Defence in this country would wish to buy a foreign aircraft if there was a British or part-British aircraft which could perform the task, but I hope that there will be agreement among the majority of Members on both sides of the House that the major responsibility of Her Majesty's Government in this field is to meet the operational requirements of the Royal Air Force.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Is the right hon. Gentleman having some difficulty in negotiating a firm price which fixes the price not only for the aircraft, but of the spares and support costs? If he is, would it not have been wise to have left the TSR.2 in being, and the jigs and tools in being, so that he could have negotiated from strength, and not from weakness?

Mr. Healey: I think that the hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. We negotiated a firm price before we decided to discontinue production of the TSR.2.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Including spares?

Mr. Healey: Yes. We have reached agreement on the cost of spares under which we shall receive them at the same price as the American Air Force receives its spares for the same aircraft. Furthermore, I am glad to be able to inform the hon. Gentleman that there has been no increase, as stated in one newspaper

today, in the expected cost of spares and support costs for the F.111A.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend say to what extent the Minister for Disarmament has been consulted in this matter?

Mr. Healey: My noble Friend the Minister for Disarmament and I pursue a steady course in the same direction at all times.

Mr. Powell: Does the operational requirement of the Royal Air Force to which the right hon. Gentleman referred include a nuclear weapon carrying capacity?

Mr. Healey: I have made it clear many times that our purpose is to find a successor to the Canberra as a strike-reconnaissance aircraft for carrying conventional weapons. It would not be necessary to buy such a sophisticated nay-attack system as we propose to get in the F.111A or any other potential aircraft that we are considering for this rôle if it were required only to drop nuclear weapons.

Mr. James Johnson: Does my right hon. Friend accept the view that the British Buccaneer Mark II is the finest aircraft of its kind in the world? It is subsonic, but has he considered making it supersonic by installing Spey engines similar to those in the Phantom?

Mr. Healey: I think that the Buccaneer Mk. II is the finest aircraft of its type in the world, and this is one of the aircraft, or a development of it, which is under consideration as a Canberra replacement.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that sufficient trials are being carried out with the Mirage IV, and if not, will he have this done in the intervening period? Would not it be a good thing to have the two months' delay stretched to three months so that we can get the General Election out of the way?

Mr. Healey: I shall not comment on the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question. The Spey/ Mirage does not exist. The Mirage aircraft is a high-level nuclear bombing plane. What we want is a low-level conventional support aircraft, and there is


no means of finding out what a Spey/ Mirage aircraft would look like, or what it would cost, or what its performance would be, in under a period of some years, but in so far as it is possible to make assessments of these various parameters, my right hon. Friend will discuss the problem this evening.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. We shall be debating some of this later in the day.

Orders of the Day — ARMED FORCES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.48 p.m.

The Deputy Secretary of State and Minister of Defence for the Army (Mr. Frederick Mulley): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a second time.
Before I come to discuss the Bill itself it may be helpful if I say a word about the machinery by which the Armed Forces Legislation is conducted.
The House will recall that in former days the Army and Air Force Acts were renewed annually. This process had its origin in the seventeenth century for good and sufficient reasons; but its continuance into the twentieth century, while it consumed an ample supply of Government time, seems to have done little to improve the shape of the Acts. This was found in 1952 when it became evident that it was necessary to rewrite the Statutes from scratch. After that revision it was decided, in order that Parliament should keep this means of control over the military forces without legislative encumbrance, that the Acts should still run only for one year at a time, but should be renewable annually by Order in Council, requiring an affirmative Resolution of both Houses, for each of four successive years. At the end of the fifth year fresh legislation would be required to embark upon a new cycle.
We are at present drawing towards the end of the fourth year of the life of the present Acts. That is why we are asking the House today to approve the Orders which continue the Army Act and the Air Force Act until the 31st December, 1966, and are commending the Second Reading of the Bill which, if approved, will start them out upon a fresh quinquennial cycle. The Bill itself, while permitting a continuance of the Acts for five successive years, only provides for it up to the end of 1967. Thereafter their fate is in the hands of Parliament.
If the House gives a Second Reading to the Bill, we intend to move to send it to a Select Committee for examination. The 1955 Acts are, in fact, the product of the most select Select Committee,


which sat from 1952 to 1954, and which included such notable members as Mr. Deputy Speaker, the late Mr. Speaker, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), and, of course, my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, who served in this difficult and dangerous terrain as guide, pioneer, skirmisher and occasionally stretcher bearer.
They recommended the adoption of a new Standing Order providing for the committal of future Bills to a Select Committee after Second Reading. They argued that this would both speed up business and ensure a more efficient, thorough and impartial examination of the Bill. They thought also that by enshrining these provisions in Standing Orders, together with the system of extension by annual Orders in Council, they would compensate for the disappearance of the Annual Acts. The Government of the day very sensibly adopted the Order in Council procedure, but apparently did not read on as far as the bit about Standing Orders. At any rate, without exactly opposing this recommendation, they did not accept it.
Perhaps they were reluctant to face so stringent and competent a Select Committee another time. At any rate, the 1961 Bill, on the prompting of my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, was in the event referred to a Select Committee. I shall not say too much about its work, as I was myself a Member, and do not wish to seem immodest, but I think I may say that the Committee did a sound job on that occasion; and as I see a number of my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite who were also on that Committee, I am emboldened to extend self-congratulation thus far.
My hon. Friend the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy was also a Member of that Committee, and if, as I hope, he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, later in the debate, we shall be making history by having a Minister for the Royal Navy participating in these debates. As the House knows, my hon. Friend has an overall responsibility, within the Ministry, for personnel matters

across the board, affecting all three Services, and he has been responsible for the co-ordination of the very considerable work that has gone into the preparation of this Measure.
When we came to consider, therefore, how we might invite the House to handle this Bill, we had no doubt that the sensible course would be to invite the House to send it again to a Select Committee, where hon. Members who are interested in these matters can examine expert witnesses, which cannot be done in debate on the Floor of the House.
When the Select Committee has completed its work the Bill will of course be recommitted to a Committee of the whole House. I trust, therefore, that the House will agree that prior examination by a Select Committee will be fruitful; and I may say that my right hon. and honourable Friends are well content that the Bill should be given thorough and impartial scrutiny in this way.
The Army Act and Air Force Act are immensely long statutes, running to well over 200 sections each. That the present Bill, in the parts dealing with these Acts, should extend to only about two dozen Clauses, is some testimony to the soundness of their structure and to the effectiveness with which they have functioned in general. There does, however, run one thread through this Bill which may help to draw together many of the provisions which otherwise seem to have no connection with each other. This is the intention to bring the three Services into line as far as is realistic, practical and worthwhile, in matters affecting their discipline and their conditions of service. However, one cannot find in a Bill of this kind any internal coherence by progressing through each Clause in turn. I think that the House would find such a process extremely tedious, and I propose instead to draw the House's attention to the more significant provisions of the Bill and try to explain what we want to achieve and the considerations that have prompted us.
This theme of unification is mostly strikingly shown by the presence in this Bill of Clauses relating to the Naval Discipline Act and to naval enlistment. The public esteem in which the Royal Navy has always been held, coupled perhaps with the absence of adverse historical


accidents, has exempted their Statutes from annual inspection by Parliament. The Naval Discipline Act is thus a permanent Statute, and corresponds to Part II of the Army and Air Force Acts. The House will recall that it was revised and brought up to date in 1957, and the Select Committee which considered it had before it the reshaped Army and Air Force Acts, so that much was done, with due allowance for the differing circumstances of the Services, to bring the Statutes into line. None the less, in the course of the past eight years the need has arisen for some amendment to the Naval Discipline Act, and in this Bill particularly we wish to adapt to the Navy the provisions we are making for the Army and Royal Air Force. This is a process which is working both ways; for there are some provisions of the Naval Discipline Act which we are adapting to the Army and R.A.F.
Because the Naval Discipline Act is not subject to periodic scrutiny it seemed convenient to take the present opportunity of amending it; this has the advantage that when the House is considering these matters it can see their application to the disciplinary codes of all three Services and examine their mutual relationship. Although the Naval Discipline Act on the one hand, and the Army and Air Force Acts on the other, are being amended in different ways by the present Bill, it is generally with the object of closing similar loopholes or applying similar sanctions.
We had hoped that it might indeed be possible to carry the integration of the discipline codes to the logical conclusion of a single code for all three Services. However, we recognise that a production of such a single code would be a long and complex task, and there was not the opportunity to undertake it this time. To the extent that the present Bill brings all three Acts closer into harmony, however, the task of their unification, if that should be undertaken at some future date, will be further simplified.
A separate group of Naval Statutes deal with enlistment. These are old and in some respects outdated, for the basis of the Naval Enlistment Code are the Naval Enlistment Acts of 1835, 1853 and 1884. At the time that the Naval Discipline Act was revised in 1957 proposals were considered to consolidate and bring up to

date the Statutes governing enlistment; but apparently right hon. Gentlemen opposite never had time available for this small but useful Measure. It therefore looks as if it will fall to a Labour Administration to put an end to the practice, admittedly infrequent in recent years, of allowing a sailor his discharge if he could produce two landsmen to replace him. We are, however, taking the opportunity provided by this Bill of modernising the naval enlistment code and bringing the enlistment provisions for all three Services within the same framework.
This brings me to Clause 2 of the Bill, which I am conscious is a somewhat radical proposal; though I trust that the House will find it nonetheless acceptable for that. In effect, it provides for the terms of enlistment for the Regular Army and Air Force, which have traditionally been laid down in the Statutes, to be removed from them and made the subject of regulation by the Defence Council. The reasons for this are purely practical and will, I am sure, commend themselves to the House as sensible. The whole trend of our modern society is away from the treatment of people as ciphers and towards recognition of their individual rights and claims. It is no longer enough to hire a man from a tavern, with the Queen's shilling, and expect to have the inexpensive and highly arbitrary use of his services for as long as authority sees fit. Men and women who join the Services today need more sophisticated inducements and detailed statements of their rights, which by this time have made the Acts extremely complicated. At the same time the Armed Forces must recruit in the face of atrractive inducements elsewhere.
This demands a flexibility in laying down terms of enlistment which the Army and Air Force cannot at present provide. It is not surprising, therefore, that even since the comprehensive revision of the Army and Air Force Acts in 1955 it should have been necessary first to revise the terms of Army enlistment in the Army (Conditions of Enlistment) Act, 1957, and then to produce almost complete rewrites of the Army and R.A.F. terms in the Army and Air Force Act, 1961, and still to find that legislation is again needed today. Moreover, the provisions governing enlistment are so detailed and complex, that the most trivial amendment produces a disproportionate disturbance


in the Statute. If, as is very likely, such an amendment may have to wait up to five years for the next review of the Acts before it can be made, it will not be surprising if we lose a good many recruiting opportunities. We therefore decided that we should ask Parliament to allow us a certain amount of flexibility in these matters—

Captain Walter Elliot: The right hon. Gentleman referred to the inducements for men and women to enlist in the services, and I understand that the Defence Council is to be given power to make Regulations. Of course, pay and pensions are very important inducements to enlistment. Would the Minister give some details now about how the reference by the Government to the Prices and Incomes Board of the next possible pay and pensions increase under the Grigg biennial review will be tied in? On the face of it, it looks as if the Government have breached or may breach the conditions under which men and women are induced to enlist in the first place.

Mr. Mulley: That was a rather long intervention, made before I had reached that part of my speech dealing with recruitment and similar matters. There is not and never has been any provision for pay to be provided by Statute. There is no provision in the Statute for the Grigg procedure. The extent to which there may be complaint will be discovered on 1st April next when the sums due are to be paid. We are considering, of course, as everyone knows, whether the present period for pay is not rather too long. I think that these considerations will take us rather far from the treatment of enlistment as set out in the Bill.
To come back to the point, although the Army and Air Force have their enlistment provisions prescribed by Statute, as regards the Royal Navy, the Defence Council already has wide powers to prescribe terms of service, powers whose lack of definition, while enabling the Navy to manage for so many years on the basis of the nineteenth century Enlistment Acts, perhaps need now to be settled within the reasonable bounds we propose for the Army and the Air Force. I must, however, emphasise that we are not proposing to make subject to Regulations all the provisions now contained in Part I of the

Army and Air Force Acts: for instance, the duty to obtain the parents' consent to the enlistment of recruits under the age of 18, or in general the provisions governing the method of enlistment and discharge.
Subsection (1) of this Clause in particular contains no element of compulsion; it allows the Defence Council to make Regulations offering soldiers, sailors and airmen an engagement or a revised engagement which they are free to accept or reject as they think fit. Subsection (3) reserves any rights which a man may have under his engagement and prevents the Defence Council from withdrawing from him any right which its exercise of the new powers confers. The House will see, therefore, that the power to make Regulations is being sought in a fairly limited respect and one in which it is not only convenient but imperative that the Defence Council should enjoy the flexibility of response to new problems which provisions in a statute do not allow.
Even so, however, we are not proposing to move these powers from the control of Parliament. Any Regulations made under Clause 2 which amend or repeal any provision in an Act of Parliament would be laid in draft, and either House may resolve, during a period of 40 days, that no further proceedings should be taken on the draft. If the Regulations do not affect an Act, they will be subject to annulment by negative resolution of either House. In this way we hope to ensure to Parliament the greatest measure of practical control with the least amount of formal procedure.
Perhaps the House will allow me, as it is, I know, of wide public interest, to say something at this point about the state of recruiting for all three Services. Hon. Members will be aware of the figures which are published month by month, and it is plain enough that 1965 has, on the whole, been a disappointing year. It began well but numbers declined rather more than usual during the summer months and the tendency has carried through into the autumn. Having said so much, however, and without wishing to underestimate the seriousness with which we regard this situation, I must emphasize that 1964 was a good recruiting year, and that the Services are having to compete for recruits in an increasingly hard market.
The total strength of the three Services in officers and other ranks continues to be maintained and, in particular, that of the Army is still rising. As I said, however, in answer to a recent Question, the Army is not likely to meet its recruiting target until next summer. The recruitment of ratings to the Royal Navy and of other ranks to the Royal Marines is at present running at a rate of just under 8,000 a year, which is about the same as a year ago, though more recruits are needed if the Navy's planned commitments are to be met.
For the Army, recruiting is running at about 20,000 a year and the increase in total strength from a year ago has been just under 2,000. Over half the serving soldiers are on nine-year engagements. This is a substantial core of trained and experienced men, though we should like to see it still higher. The increasing competition for young apprentices and technicians in industry, together with a smaller age group, led to a disappointing fall in the recruitment of junior soldiers between the ages of 15 and 17 from 6,500 in 1964 to 5,000 in 1965.
The recruiting pattern for the Royal Air Force has been similar to that of the Army, falling away after a good start and is causing some concern. However, the new arrangements for youth entry introduced in September, 1964, have been well received and technician and craft apprenticeships have been reasonably well supported.
Officer recruiting throughout the Services is fairly satisfactory, though there are shortages in certain respects. The output from the Service colleges continues to be up to requirements, though it is still no easier to get graduate entrants and difficulties have been experienced in recruiting technical officers. Recruiting to the women's services has been generally satisfactory.
Most of the other provisions in Part II of the Bill follow the principle of providing a framework of Regulations to govern enlistment into the three Services—

Mr. Humphrey Atkins: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the subject of recruiting, he will, I am sure, agree that to give the figures which he has is only part of the

picture. Would he complete it by saying something about re-engagement?

Mr. Mulley: I cannot give figures on re-engagement, but this is, I know, an extremely important part of the picture, and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy will be dealing with this in his reply to the debate.
Part III of the Bill deals mainly with amendments to the disciplinary provisions of the Army and Air Force Acts and Naval Discipline Act. Clause 15 provides a new power, applicable to all three Services overseas together with all civilians who are subject to service law. When people are stationed abroad, often in rather out of the way areas, they may fall foul of the local law. We owe a duty to the Service men and civilians whom we send out, and to their families, to try to obviate their being held in the custody of the local civil authorities, possibly under unsuitable conditions.
This is not to say that we seek or expect immunities for irresponsible or criminal behaviour; but we already subscribe to a number of international agreements and arrangements which provide for persons who are subject to service law and who are to be tried by a local court for offence under the law of the country, to be taken meanwhile into British service custody. At present, however, without any statutory basis for such an arrangement in our own law, it can only be lawfully done with the consent of the person concerned, unless the custody is authorised by local law.
This is not a satisfactory arrangement, because it handicaps our own service authorities in the responsible discharge of their obligations towards the local courts; and Clause 15 provides a statutory foundation for this practice. The power which the Clause confers will be clearly controlled by the Regulations which the Defence Council may make, calling for regular reports on the arrest and custody of the person held.
It may be appropriate at this point to mention new arrangements which came into force this year over jurisdiction. The House may recall that earlier this year there were incidents in Aden involving the death of civilians through acts of British soldiers on duty. In one case the soldier was tried by the local


court. This aroused a certain amount of comment from hon. Members on account of the difficult political situation obtaining in Aden.
The reason why the soldier had been dealt with by the local court was that the practice in Colonial Territories had traditionally followed the practice in the United Kingdom, which is that members of the Services who commit offences affecting civilian persons and property are tried by the civil courts; but when our troops go overseas to independent countries in Europe or in the Commonwealth, treaty arrangements are made for jurisdiction to be exercised by the United Kingdom Service Authorities for offences committed on duty. This is the accepted international procedure.
It seemed to us rather anomalous that with this becoming the general rule throughout the Commonwealth, the diminishing number of Colonial Territories should still follow the former practice. With the concurrence of my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary, we therefore devised new arrangements by which soldiers, sailors and airmen serving in Colonial Territories would receive protection similar to that which they enjoyed when serving abroad in independent countries with whom we had treaty arrangements.
These arrangements, which were embodied in an Order in Council promulgated in June this year, cover appropriate Colonial Territories and restrict the trial of offenders by courts of the Colony for offences committed on duty, or against other Service men and Service property, but as in other status agreements there are provisions for trial by local courts where the Service authorities do not choose to deal with the case. It is often convenient to do this, for instance, in the case of minor traffic offences.
My right hon. Friend and I feel that this is an important step forward in the protection of our Service men overseas, which is desirable not only because of the many occasions and many different parts of the world in which they are called on to serve but also because of the troubled circumstances in which these incidents can arise.
In Part III there also appears another theme, which unites these miscellaneous

provisions, that is, to bring Naval, Army and Air Force discipline more into line with present practice in the civil courts. Instances of this are Clauses 16 and 20 which deal with fines. Apart from fines for drunkenness, these have a fairly recent history in the Army and Air Force Acts. Forfeitures of a sum from pay were introduced as a punishment for offences for the first time in 1961. The amount which could be awarded was limited in all cases to a sum equivalent to fourteen days' pay.
The new punishment has been found useful, but courts-martial have sometimes refrained from awarding it, even though apporpiate in form, because they have not thought that the amount which they could award sufficiently represented the gravity of the offence. In consequence they have had to continue to award punishments such as forfeiture of seniority or reduction in rank, which may in the event prove to have a greater adverse financial effect and may be much more damaging to a man's career.
Accordingly, we propose to increase the amount of the fine which -a court-martial can award for a Service offence to a sum equivalent to 28 days' pay and to give a court-martial the same powers as a civil court to award a fine for a civil offence. This discretion, however, applies only to courts-martial. The amount of the fine which may be awarded by commanding officers remains unchanged.
While it would be wrong to suggest that a system of fines is popular—one soldier with whom I discussed it said that he was against fines because they hit the soldier's pocket—experience shows that it is well designed to meet the modem disciplinary needs of the Armed Services. The Adjutant-General recently conducted a world-wide survey of the operation of the system in the Army. The results have been reassuring. First, there have been a large number of cases in which fines have been substituted for what would have been sentences of detention before the introduction of this alternative. Secondly, subordinate commanders have been able to dispose of offences which would previously have had to be referred to commanding officers. Thirdly, although it is difficult to make a direct comparison between civil and


military practice, there are clear indications that the general level of fines imposed in the Army is comparable with that imposed by magistrates' courts.
This is perhaps an appropriate occasion on which to make some remarks about the working of the Discipline Acts. Hon. Members who turn through the pages of the Service Acts, will soon become aware that these Statutes enshrine, in effect, a complete criminal code, covering both the offences, such as desertion or insubordination, which are peculiar to Service life and the whole range of offences which are tried by our criminal courts. These powers are exercised either by commanding officers in summary trial or by courts-martial.
I am afraid that there is still some public misapprehension of the status and conduct of these tribunals, which appears both in public comment, and sometimes in correspondence which Service Ministers receive. There is an impression that courts-martial are in some way not real courts of justice, sometimes even that it is not real justice that they dispense; and people are sometimes surprised that we should expect them to take their verdicts seriously, and pained that they are not free to call into question their procedure, qualifications or integrity.
Courts-martial, as the House knows, are the equivalent of the civil courts of justice, exercising very much the same sort of powers, and the system whereby they are advised by special judge advocates is a real guarantee that they dispense justice in neither an amateur nor a haphazard fashion. The accused is given a fair hearing, conducted under rules of procedure similar to those which apply in the civil courts, and the confirmation and review procedure of every court-martial sentence is a considerable safeguard against any miscarriage of justice. Finally the Courts-Martial Appeal Court over which the Lord Chief Justice presides, and which is equivalent to the Court of Criminal Appeal, justly indicates the place which courts-martial occupy in our judicial system and the grave matters with which they are concerned.
It is a matter of some satisfaction that, in contrast with national trends in crime, serious offences in the Services continue to show a reduction. In the last year, for all three Services, there were

2,431 trials by court-martial as opposed to 2,689 the previous year and 3,105 the year before that. Of these, 25 only have resulted in applications to the Courts-Martial Appeal Court, of which seven have been granted and none so far upheld. These statistics are perhaps more eloquent testimony than any argument that I can employ of the high standard of justice dispensed by Service courts-martial.
This Bill, though of limited scope and technical nature, is, I suggest, of no little importance to us. It does three main things; it renews the Army Act and the Air Force Act, it establishes new machinery for regulating enlistment into the armed services, and it revises and consolidates the Discipline Acts of the Armed Forces. These Acts are the foundation of military discipline and the guarantee both of the Service man's rights and of our own civil liberties, for it is in them that are set the bounds of good order and military discipline.
That to achieve its simple and perhaps modest aim, this Bill may itself appear a rather complex measure, is due to the diversity of the Statutes which I have mentioned and which in turn reflect historic attitudes and the accidents of time. Such as it is, however, I venture to suggest that apart from its essential rôle of securing discipline of the Armed Forces, this Bill takes a modest step forward in the rationalisation of the law and quite a large stride towards the harmonious integration of the Services. With these considerations in mind, I commend it to the House.

4.20 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Apart from Clause 1, which is of a formal character—and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, is part of the framework of the current procedure for annual authorisation of the Army, Air Force, but not the Navy—the Bill consists of a miscellaneous collection of proposals, of widely varying importance, covering subjects which have little relation to each other, except in that they all relate to the Armed Forces of the Crown.
It has been suggested that if the Bill is read a Second time today it should be committed to a Select Committee for consideration, and I say at once that that seems to my hon. Friends and I to


be an entirely suitable way of dealing with a Bill of this kind. I intend in this debate to refer only to some of the more general and important features of the Bill, as the right hon. Gentleman did, and to reserve, for the more careful and thorough scrutiny which must take place in Committee, the very large number of doubts and questions which the first consideration of the Bill has raised in our minds.
Clause 2, to which the right hon. Gentleman addressed a fair part of his speech, deals with the terms of entry, enlistment and conditions of service in the Regular Forces. These are at present governed by various Acts of Parliament. It seems reasonable, in general, that terms and conditions of service should, in future, be governed by Regulations made by the Defence Council to give the sort of flexibility to which the right hon. Gentleman referred and that those Regulations should be laid before Parliament, about which I will have something to say in a moment.
Whether such Regulations should, in general, be made under the negative or affirmative procedure is a matter on which we would like for the moment to reserve our position until after the Select Committee stage. The disadvantage of this system—of proceeding by Regulations and not by Statute—is that no amendment of Regulations is possible. They are laid in the form of a Statutory Instrument and the House is put in the position of either rejecting or accepting them as a whole, and no amendment can be made. That is the essential difficulty which we face with Regulations, but I see the force of the right hon. Gentleman's argument about flexibility, especially in a period of difficult recruitment. And, as I say, we would like to reserve our position on this till later.
On page 3 of the Bill is a provision for the Regulations to amend or repeal Acts of Parliament, and this is not entirely without precedent. The House will be familiar with other occasions when this has been done—but, I suggest, more particularly in Private than in Public Bills. It is done, but is the right hon. Gentleman really satisfied that this is a satisfactory procedure to adopt at this

stage? He referred to past Conservative Administrations, the number of Statutes and how things had become more complicated. However, is the right hon. Gentleman not adding to that complication and the number of Statutes? It would have been possible to proceed by repealing the earlier enlistment Acts and other similar Measures and to propose this procedure by Regulation, but that is not being done.
In the first Schedule there are three repeals, with some partial repeals in the Fourth Schedule, but, as far as I can estimate, the position which will exist if the Bill is passed will be that there will continue in existence about 116 Acts of Parliament regulating entry, enlistment and terms of service and other matters relating to the Armed Forces. I concede that about 20 or 30 of them are minor Acts, but there are still about 70 or 80 Statutes of significance regulating the matters with which the Bill is dealing. That being the case, it must follow that other exercises of the regulation-making powers will involve the amendment or repeal of some statutory provisions and that, therefore, we must pay considerable attention to this proposal in the Bill.
This brings me to my first question. Is it not the case that the Regulations which repeal or amend an Act will not be subject to the affirmative procedure? I understand that if they affect a Statute they will be laid in draft before the House. I would like to be reassured on this point because I do not think that that involves even the negative procedure. The right hon. Gentleman said that it did mean the negative procedure, but does it not perhaps mean that they will come into force unless an hon. Member puts down a Motion disagreeing with them?

Mr. Mulley: That is really the negative procedure. The drafts will come into force unless a Prayer to the contrary is put down and carried.

Mr. Bell: I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman is on quite sound ground about this. It is an extremely technical point on which I will not press him now. I am sure that when the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy replies to the debate he will be adequately informed on the subject. There


is a technical difference between a Prayer to annul and an affirmative Motion. I may be wrong, and I am seeking guidance. Suffice at this stage to say that I have a feeling that these are not pray-able against, to coin a horrible expression. This is a matter of considerable importance.
In any case, is this really a good operation at all? Surely at the moment, when we are moving over to terms of enlistment and entry by regulation, this is the time for repealing the forest of old Acts of Parliament with which we are concerned in this branch of the law. I mentioned earlier the figure of about 116 Acts with probably 70 or 80 significant ones, but that is after the last Statute Law Revision Act, 1953, which swept up about 30 old Acts which had become either obsolete or no longer effective. The number which I mentioned are still operative Acts, which must have been the view of the Statute Law Reform Committee.
I require a further assurance about Clause 2. If the Regulations will be used in place——

Mr. R. T. Paget: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the point he was discussing, will he give an example of an old Act which causes embarrassment now?

Mr. Bell: The hon. and learned Gentleman has not quite grasped my point, which is that the Bill leaves old Acts in force so that the terms and conditions of enlistment remain, when the Bill receives the Royal Assent, governed by various Statutes. This must be borne in mind when considering that the Defence Council will, one assumes, exercise its power under Clause 2 to embody terms of enlistment, service and so on in Regulations. Those Regulations will have to include a number of repeals and amendments of old Acts of Parliament.
My point is that this is an unsatisfactory start to the method of proceeding by Regulation. It would be very much better at the same time to clear away the antique Acts—some of them are quite old; certain Navy Acts go back to 1835, if not earlier—and to have Regulations which are not made by reference to 70 or 80 different Acts of Parliament. It is not a question of some particular old Act

being embarrassing, but the principle of the procedure that is involved.
If we are to use Regulations, it is very important that they shall not be used so as to impose on the recruit an additional burden beyond that which he undertook when he entered the Service. I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that that point is adequately covered in the Clause, but I have been in some doubt, because in subsection (3) the expression used is
… a right … under any Act of Parliament (including this Act) …
The right hon. Gentleman expanded that to a right which arose out of the exercise of the regulation-making power under Clause 2.
That is the assurance I sought. It is important to be quite clear that this is not protection given only to the first time the Regulations are made but that it applies each time amending Regulations are made, so that if a person enters one of the Services in reliance partly on the old statutory conditions which continue and partly on the Regulations, he is protected against onerous change both in respect of the statutory element in his terms of enlistment and in respect of the regulatory element in those terms——

Captain W. Elliot: My hon. Friend speaks of "onerous changes". As I read from line 22 onwards in page 3, the language means any changes in the man's terms of enlistment. Would my hon. Friend agree?

Mr. Bell: I think that it means any changes in the terms of enlistment which would be disadvantageous to the man, or would put a new burden on him; that any such change is not competent under Clause 2. I think that changes that are in favour of the recruit can be made——

The Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy (Mr. Christopher Mayhew): I do not know whether it would be of assistance——

Mr. Bell: I do not know that it would, because I have other questions to ask the Minister of Defence, and it might be better if I got them all off my chest and he got them all on to his at the same time.
The second main subject dealt with in the Bill is reserves, and, again, I do not raise any fundamental objection to what


Clause 4 does. Broadly speaking, it brings the Royal Navy into relation with the Army and Royal Air Force. I wonder whether, in this respect, it is not desirable that the "competent authority"—which is the authority that can impose the additional burden on the enlisted man or rating—should always be the Defence Council, and undesirable that it can, in certain cases under Clause 14, be
… an officer prescribed by regulations of the Defence Council …
This is not a matter of minor importance but occurs where either
… a state of war exists between Her Majesty and a foreign power; or … warlike operations are … in progress; …
or the Royal Naval Reserve is called up. The rating is then retained in the Service.
This, again, is an action of such character that if done, for example, under subsection (1,b) of Clause 4 it has to be reported to Parliament at the earliest opportunity. I should have thought that such decisions as that—which are, therefore, on the political plane, and have to be brought at once to this House if the House is sitting—should be taken by the Defence Council and not by an officer nominated by Regulations.
Clause 5 is parallel to Clause 12, and I would ask the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy to tell us something which his right hon. Friend did not tell us, and that is why Clause 5 is in the Bill at all. This provision replaces Royal Proclamations calling up the reserves by, in effect, Orders under the hand of the Secretary of State. This may or may not be highly significant—I do not know. Royal Proclamations are very rare occurrences—I think that we have only had two since the end of the Second World War. Obviously, there must be great reluctance on the part of the Executive to advise Her Majesty to make a Royal Proclamation. If that is replaced by an Order under the hand of the Secretary of State—in the name, of course, of Her Majesty—is that not an easier procedure to undertake? Will it not increase the likelihood of recall or retention in marginal cases and, therefore, increase the burden involved by entry into any of the Armed Forces?
These are matters of real importance. I am thinking more especially of the Royal Navy in saying this, although I

realise that it will apply to all three Services. We are at present going through a difficult period in recruitment, and in the Royal Navy we are going through a very difficult period in relation to re-engagement. The liability which ensues at the end of the completed Regular engagement is a matter of considerable importance in relation to re-engagement by men in the Royal Navy.
Recruitment into the Navy is, to a very considerable extent, something that runs in naval families and ports. Those concerned are well informed about the incidence of the Service and the liability that remains for recall on the completion of their 12-year engagement or their re-engagement. A change of this character could be very significant. If it means that there is to be a change in practice and that such recalls are to be approximated in their gravity to recalls before Royal Proclamation, this could significantly affect naval recruitment. And—dare I say it?—this is on top of Grigg, because let no one think that what the Government have done about the Grigg formula, or what the First Secretary has done about the Grigg formula, in referring the subject to the Prices and Incomes Board, is a matter that will have no effect on Service recruiting. It will. Hon. and right hon. Members opposite know quite well that it will. It is not for me to mix myself up in their internal difficulties. All I say is that I approach some of the provisions in the Bill and their effect on recruitment to the Armed Forces having in mind the severe blow to the confidence of men in the Forces which has been struck by the Government in what they have done.
The Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy will be relieved to hear that I have jumped to Clause 15, because I do not want to deal with minor points. Clause 15 has been explained to us in part by the Minister of Defence for the Army. It is a very odd undertaking. The right hon. Gentleman explained that there had been difficulties in Aden. The result is two and half pages of highly laborious drafting of extreme complication. I am not sure at the end that I know what it is all about, and, what is worse, I am not sure that the Minister knows either. I do not want to add unduly to his difficulties but I should like to ask one or two questions.
First, how have the Armed Forces lived for so long without these two and a half pages? This is an odd procedure which provides for the arrest of a person who may not have committed any offence at all. He is to be arrested as if he had committed an offence and he is to be arrested in odd circumstances. He may he arrested by a person who is junior to himself.
The Clause makes provision for this, first in subsection (1) which is straightforward. One starts with a person who is in the custody of a civil Power somewhere abroad. The Clause says that an officer of the British Forces may accept him into custody upon his being handed over by that civil Power. This is quite reasonable, but subsection (2) says that he may he arrested if there is some apprehension that otherwise he may be arrested by the civil Power. There is no requirement that he should be reasonably thought to have committed an offence. It is purely a case of getting in first in being arrested.
The odd thing is that in relation to the provision in subsection (1), which is fairly obvious—and I am surprised that we have not had that provision already—he can be received only by an officer who is either senior to himself in rank or, as mentioned in subsection (3), one who is authorised by virtue of the position which he is occupying at the moment to do so under the various Acts. In other words, he is a provost officer or something of that kind. In the case of subsection (2)—the highly imaginative arrest for reasons which did not apply in the past—he cannot be arrested by anyone below the rank of lieutenant-commander or equivalent rank in the Army or Air Force and the provision in subsection (3) does not apply, which seems a remarkable anomaly.
I find most remarkable and highly objectionable the exclusions in subsection (8). Here we have a case where a man is arrested who may not have been guilty of any offence. It is almost protective arrest and yet in relation to arrest in those circumstances, which can be made by a junior officer, all the safeguards written into the Service Acts about the need to charge a man in reasonable time, and the need to make reports to the Defence Council if he is kept in custody for more than a certain period without being charged, are all excluded. He can

be held for as long as the Service likes. It need not make a report or prefer a charge.
We are told that this is right because there is power in the Clause for the Defence Council to make Regulations and that no doubt those Regulations will provide for matters of that kind. If we are to give this somewhat unconstitutional power to officers abroad, these safeguards should be applied to these arrests as they apply to all arrests in the course of Service discipline. We shall have to ask the Defence Council to make Regulations covering basic guarantees of personal rights which are already written into the Statutes.
I pass over Clauses 17 and 18, saying only that I find it a little difficult to understand why they are in the Bill. Clause 18 says that the Republic of Ireland shall no longer be considered a foreign country. I should have thought that we would have heard something from the Minister of Defence for the Army about this revolutionary proposal and what ulterior motive lies behind this innocent facade. Perhaps we may hear more about it at the end of the debate. Clause 19 has caused me some puzzlement. Its effect seems to be to equate British Colonies to foreign countries for purposes of some part of the Service discipline code. I do not think that in his speech the right hon. Gentleman explained why this is being done.

Mr. Mulley: I would have explained to the hon. Gentleman and the House but seeing that the time was passing I deliberately omitted this and other matters previously mentioned although they were in my notes. The purpose of the Clause is to extend the criterion for active service to Commonwealth as well as foreign countries, because often troops are forced to take an active course in Commonwealth countries.

Mr. Bell: The right hon. Gentleman has used a slightly unfortunate expression. He said "Commonwealth" when he means "Colonies". This is unfortunate because, later on, the Bill makes a distinction between the two. It will be seen from the Explanatory Memorandum that colonies are meant in this context. In fact another provision in the Clause displaces the Governor of a Colony as a person who can make a declaration about


troops being on active service. This seems to me also open to objection, although I reserve our position on it, because it implies the replacement of the civil power by a military authority. At present it is the Governor who declares that the troops are on active service. In future it will be the commander of the Forces, who is a military officer. One is bound to ask whether there is any topical significance here. Rhodesia is a British Colony and we on this side of the House are somewhat concerned about the rôle and status of British Forces in Central Africa. It may seem a somewhat odd significance that we should be discussing a Clause at this moment which puts Forces in a Colony in the same position in many respects as if they were in a foreign country. I hope that the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy will be able to clear that up.
I am doing what the Deputy Secretary of State did, namely, leaving out some attractive points, such as the one on Clause 20, which replaces stoppages of pay by fines. I think this must have been prompted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because when a rating's pay is stopped he does not pay tax on it. If he is fined the same amount, he has to pay Income Tax on the full rate of his pay, although it has been stopped, and pay the fine. However, these are pleasant points which we can go into in Select Committee.
I come now to three Clauses which cause a good deal of doubt. I refer to Clauses 24, 25 and 33. These are the ones which relate to civil and military jurisdiction. I know that some of my hon. Friends are very worried about what is here proposed. Broadly speaking, what is being said is that, if a man is convicted before a Service court, he shall not be subject to retrial for the same offence before a civil court. It is possible to have two views about this. I concede at once that this is a difficult problem. We shall have to look very carefully indeed at this provision, because in certain circumstances it could lead to some extraordinary results. If a man commits a very serious offence and his commanding officer sentences him for it to the loss of ten days' pay or something of that kind, the civil court is then totally excluded from proceeding in relation to that offence.

Mr. Mulley: It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman would give us some examples of what he has in mind and also make clear whether he is talking about civil courts in this country or civil courts abroad, because, as he knows, civil offences committed by Service men in this country are always tried by the civil court and not by a Service court.

Mr. Bell: That is a matter of arrangement. We must look at the form of the Bill. I am not necessarily disagreeing. I am merely pointing to the difficulty which arises. It may be a question of principle. If the man is tried by his commanding officer or by court martial, the civil court is ousted. One can choose any example one likes. It may be as extreme as one cares to make it just to emphasise the nature of the problem. One of the things which is being done in the Bill is to generalise this and apply it to civil courts abroad as well, so that it will apply anywhere in the world. I am not necessarily saying that this is wrong. I am saying that this is an innovation which we must consider very carefully indeed. It is very wide in its terms, because what is said is that he may not be tried for the same offence or for substantially the same offence by a civil court.
Here there is a peculiar anomaly. In the case of the Army and the Royal Air Force, if a man is tried in a civil court and is convicted, he cannot be tried before a Service court for the same offence but he can be tried for one which is different although substantially the same. That is the effect of Clauses 24 and 25. Clause 33 provides that in the case of the Royal Navy if the man is convicted before a civil court he cannot be tried before a naval court for the same offence or substantially the same offence. Therefore, a quite different test will apply to naval courts-martial from that which will apply to Army and Royal Air Force courts-martial. This is very strange indeed. I do not know whether it is accidental or whether there is some reason for it. This is what is being done in Clauses 24, 25 and 33.
If a man is convicted before a civil court, he cannot be tried by a Service court in these circumstances. On the other hand, if the civil court takes into account in sentencing him an offence


which he has committed—not that for which he is being tried, but another one—then, although that has been taken into account in the sentence, he can be tried for it by a Service court. There is no logicality here. There is no consistency whatever. I think that all this has not been thought out very carefully at all. I should like to know at some stage—perhaps the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy can help me—what "substantially the same offence" means. Substantially the same in fact? Substantially the same in law? Or substantially the same in fact and in law? Has anybody considered what this expression means or how it will work out in practice?
The last point on which I want clarification is Clause 26—
Powers of command over Her Majesty's military and air forces"—
in effect by foreign officers. This, again, seems to be an innovation. I do not know how this has been managed in the past, but the Clause would allow British troops to be put under foreign command. Perhaps I ought to ask the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy in particular whether this is in preparation for the Atlantic Nuclear Force or the mixed manned force, about which we have heard so much, or has it just happened by accident?
My final thought is that consolidation is now urgently necessary. It is impossible for those affected by the Bill any longer to understand what it means. There are altogether 116 Acts in force. Fourteen Acts are referred to in the Bill. Hon. Members who want an illustration of the difficulty which will face a Service man who wants to know where he stands in future about his liability cannot do better than look at the top of page 31, which deals with the Recall of Army and Air Force Pensioners Act, 1948.
The recall of reservists is a matter of great importance. I ask hon. Members to imagine that they are reservists wanting to know where they stand. I invite them to read the words at the top of page 31:
The reference in section 2(3) (as amended by the revision of the Army and Air Force Acts (Transitional Provisions) Act 1955) to the provisions of the Army Act 1955 or the Air Force Act 1955 as to the term for which a person may be enlisted, which, by virtue of the Army and Air Force Act 1961 is to be

construed as including a reference to the corresponding provisions of that Act, shall be construed as including a reference to the corresponding provisions of section 2 of this Act and Regulations made thereunder.
Where does the rating stand at the end of reading that? I have put in a little work on this. I think I know where he stands, although I am not sure. However, I am quite sure that the Deputy Secreretary of State could not tell me where the rating stands.

Mr. Mulley: This is a question which I can answer very simply and precisely. The hon. Gentleman should read the title again. The rating—namely a sailor—would not be covered by this provision at all. This is for the Army and the Royal Air Force.

Mr. Bell: The rating will now know where the Army or the Air Force man stands. The person affected will not know where he stands, nor can he. The right hon. Gentleman must face the fact that this kind of complication has now reached the ultimate and that consolidation must take place.
In general there is an enormous amount to examine in the Bill, but subject to answers given by the Minister of Defence for the Navy in reply to our Questions, we shall not oppose the Bill at this stage but, of course, we reserve our rights in the light of what he says.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. R. T. Paget: I rise for, I believe, the third time at the quinquennial arrival of this Measure to welcome it. Its origins may be described as, "by good sense out of filibuster". I provided the filibuster and Lord Head provided the good sense. What happened was that the annual Army Act always had to come before the House until, for various reasons which, I must confess, had little to do with the Army, the Army Act in one year was obstructed by a group of us who put down a very large number of Amendments. It became reasonably clear that the Bill, as it was, had little chance of getting through and the Army looked like becoming illegal.
At that point, Lord Head, who was Secretary of State for War, came to me and asked, "What do you want?". We then brought up the idea of having a Select Committee working in parallel with a Departmental Committee so that each


point proposed by the Select Committee in preparing a new Measure should go to the Departmental Committee and we would receive back its objections. Sometimes the Minister himself came to us and we discussed what could or could not be done. By that process of dialogue a Bill came through these two Committees and eventually reached the House, where it was accepted both by the Government and the House without any Amendment at all. As a legislative device which, I believe, has been used only once, it has a record which deserves its being used again for other purposes.
Apart from giving the Bill a general welcome, I want to raise a rather small but nevertheless important point with regard to recruitment. Here we are providing that the terms of service shall be laid down by Regulation rather than by sections of the Act. Probably the all-important point is whether those who enlist can really be assured that the terms of service will be implemented and that they will not be varied unilaterally to their disadvantage.
When the hon. and gallant Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot) raised the question of the reference of the Service pay increases to Mr. Aubrey Jones, he certainly rang a note as far as I am concerned. I was certainly quite unaware that Mr. Aubrey Jones's organisation has the power to vary terms of service or private contracts already entered into. If terms of service provide for an annual increase, then that is the bargain made between the employer and the employee on engagement, and I am extremely surprised to learn if, in these circumstances, Mr. Aubrey Jones can proceed to vary a contract already entered into at the beginning of service. If that be the position with regard to a private contract, then, in the case of a public engagement entered into upon terms which provide for biennial increases in accordance with the Grigg formula, set out as part of the terms of engagement, I am astonished that it is within the power of Mr. Aubrey Jones to proceed to vary the Royal Warrant unilaterally and without reference to those concerned.
I would like some reassurance on this and some very specific assurances indeed that, when terms of service are offered, whether it be by Statute or by Regulation,

and people accept the bargain and join upon the basis of those terms, then, whether it be as to pay or as to retired pay, those terms of service will be observed and increases will be granted in accordance with the formula laid down in the terms of engagement and that they will not be departed from. That is a very important principle in relation to the recruiting figures. That is the only point I want to make with regard to the Bill.

5.7 p.m.

Mr. Edward Gardner: There is only one point I want to raise, but it is important, as I hope the House will agree. At first sight, the Bill, as the Explanatory Memorandum states, makes minor changes, but, by Clause 24, it promises to make a constitutional change that might well be considered as of fundamental importance.
Members of the Armed Forces are not only subject to the ordinary law of the land but to the code of Air Force, Army and Navy law. Members of the Armed Forces, by reaching that status, do not cease to be ordinary citizens. By becoming members of the Armed Forces they do not debar themselves of the rights of citizenship. Nor are they exempt from the liabilities of being citizens. Nor are they removed from the ordinary arm of the law.
Indeed, the principle that a member of the Armed Forces still remains subject to the ordinary law is not a minor one, and to touch that principle or alter it in any way is not a minor change. It is indeed a major principle and has been described as one of the cardinal features of the law of England. If Clause 24 were left as drafted, it would remove, in effect, from the jurisdiction of the civil courts a member of the Armed Forces who had been tried by a court-martial, by a disciplinary court, by a commanding officer or by the appropriate superior authority. This is in contradiction and conflict with the law as it stands and as it is set out by both the Army and the Air Force Acts, 1955. The House should realise what a fundamental change we are undertaking if we allow Clause 24 to remain unamended.
The present law on the relation between military and civil law is set out in Section 133 of the Army Act, 1955, and Section 133 of the Air Force Act 1955. By those Sections a member of either


of those two arms of the Services is still liable to be tried before a civil court, even though he might have been tried and sentenced by a court-martial, a commanding officer, or an appropriate superior authority. Indeed, subsection (2) of Section 133 gives statutory power which clearly and plainly states that where a person is tried by a civil court for any offence, then the civil court has to take into account in awarding punishment any punishment which has been awarded by a court-martial, commanding officer, or appropriate superior authority.
It is quite clear that, relating as they do to the powers of a civil court, those Sections exclude any right by a member of the Army or Air Force to raise his previous acquittal or conviction as a bar to subsequent indictment for the same offence before a civil court. That is as it should be and as it has been for centuries. The civil liberties and rights of the individual in civil law have been protected by this feature of our law, which recognises the superiority of the civil over the military law. Way back in history, one famous Chief Justice, when being asked to say whether an officer of the Army, by suggesting that a soldier had been or would be tried by the Army, could resist arrest by the civil authorities, said,
It were a vain thing to talk of courts and laws of military men who both give the law and control legal proceedings.
I do not suggest that there will necessarily be any abuse by the military avoiding having one of its members coming before a civil court by finding him guilty by a court martial, or on summary procedure, and giving him a light sentence, thereby protecting him from the full force of the law. It would be quite artificial to argue that a court martial would behave in that irresponsible way. But it is not beyond imagination to envisage cases where a commanding officer would value a man or woman under his command to such an extent that, in order to protect him from the full force of civil law, he would bring him before military jurisdiction where he would be found guilty and given some light sentence. I am sure that this happens very rarely and is likely to be a very rare occurrence in future. But the fact that it might happen and that in

other circumstances could happen seems to me, as I hope that it will seem to the House, a good reason for keeping the law as it is.
After all, while one does not want to go to extremes in this matter or suggest what in practice is never likely to happen, when, as is the case with Clause 24 in its present form, the right is given to the military in effect to avoid the jurisdiction of the civil courts, there is always room for abuse. As it stands and as it has stood in the Army Act and the Air Force Act, 1955, the law avoids any possibility of abuse. This is a good thing and it is something which should be preserved.
One knows that in a civil court a person can raise the plea that he has been acquitted or convicted of the same offence and by doing so avoid, as he well ought to avoid and the law aims to see that he should avoid, the jeopardy of being put in peril twice. The law as it relates to this plea in bar of subsequent indictment, the plea of autrefois aquit or autrefois convict is strict and the plea can be raised effectively only when acquittal or conviction is for the exact offence already in the subsequent indictment. Clause 24 says in effect that the plea of a previous acquittal or conviction can be made where the offence is substantially the same. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) said, the House would be grateful if we could know the meaning of the words "substantially the same", which is a far wider expression than that which is used in civil law—"the exact offence". Of course, in civil law one can also raise the fact that the subsequent indictment is based on the same acts or relations in respect of which the previous acquittal or conviction was made.
This is no small matter but a matter of great principle which we have always respected and followed—that the civil courts and their jurisdiction shall not be ousted. Clause 24 does just that and it is right that the House should now ask why.

5.17 p.m.

Mr. Peter Doig: The Bill only tinkers with the real problem of the Forces. I want to relate one or two personal experiences while I was in the


Forces and some experiences of my constituents which have been brought to my notice. I will start with one of the latter.
Recently one of my constituents went for a medical examination for the Army, when he disclosed that he had previously applied and had been rejected for medical reasons connected with his ears. On this occasion, the doctor declared him to be fit and he was accepted into the Army, giving up his civilian job. Within a few days he had another medical examination, when it was found that his ears were defective. After a few days' service, he was discharged for lack of proper examination, having lost his civilian job. There is something seriously wrong with such a situation. I raised the matter in an Adjournment debate and, to my astonishment, I was informed that there were a number of similar cases and that this was not isolated.
This is surely a sad state of affairs. If we want recruits for the Army or any of the Services, then a proper examination should be carried out before they are accepted and before they have given up their civilian jobs. This does not appear to happen. There appears to be a routine procedure whereby recruits have a preliminary examination, are accepted and taken into the Services, and, following their entry, have another medical examination as a routine matter. For what purpose? Presumably, it is to find out if the first doctor made a mistake. If he made a mistake, who suffers? The man who volunteered. In the case of my constituent no compensation was paid. It seems that this procedure ought to be altered and that a proper medical examination should be carried out before people are accepted into the Services.
The second point I should like to make is that when a recruit offers himself he is liable to be sent anywhere in the world. This is an extraordinary state of affairs and it is not surprising that we do not get recruits. If a bakery wanted a baker and it advertised for one on the condition that he must be prepared to go to America or Japan or Timbuctoo, or anywhere else in the world, then it would not get that baker. That is why the Army does not get its recruits. This is a remarkable condition which ought to be examined. This same man is expected to sign on for a number of years, for 7,

14 or 21. He signs on at a particular rate of pay but, having once signed on, he has no guarantee that he will ever get an increase in pay. When one considers the implications of this, is it surprising that the Army cannot get recruits? I do not think it is.
People who become recruits under these conditions ought to have their heads examined. The obvious thing to do to rectify this, and many other annoyances within the Services, is to give the men the same rights as they would have in any other job—the right, if they are dissatisfied, to resign. If such a system works well in civilian life there is no reason why it should not work in the Armed Forces. Occasionally, people put up excuses saying that if a situation arose needing volunteers for a dangerous assignment no one would volunteer. But this does not work out in practice. I was in the Forces during the war, and the most dangerous assignments never lacked volunteers. In the early stages of the war, air crew suffered the highest casualty rate yet it was harder to get into air crew than into any other part of the Service. This excuse will not hold water. This is the one thing above all others, which would not only produce all the recruits we want, but would produce a better standard of recruit and which would remove the vast majority of what I consider to be legitimate grievances.
If a man in one of the Services wishes to leave for some reason—and there are dozens of people who want to leave from my constituency alone, who are continually writing to me and who all appear to have very good reasons for getting out—under the present system he is unable to do so. What can he do? He can make a nuisance of himself by committing a series of crimes, in which case eventually, after a long struggle, he will be dismissed from the Service. This is not a very sensible position in which to force a person.
I want to say a word about trials in the Forces. Unlike the hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner), I am afraid that I have not come accross the benevolent type of commanding officer he visualises, the ones who rescue the men—rather the reverse. My experience of some of these so-called trials is quite different. Take the minor offences. A man is brought in front of his command-


ing officer and his commanding officer relates what the offence is, and asks him if he has anything to say. Then the commanding officer says to him, and this is the classic formula, "Will you accept my punishment?" The man is asked to accept something, but he does not know what it is. There is no question of him being told the sentence and then appealing if he is dissatisfied. A man is expected to say, "I will accept your punishment", but he has not the slighest idea what it will be. It could be far worse than he thought he deserved, but he is asked in advance because the commanding officer wants to tie him down in advance to take anything which he cares to give.
It is time that that ordeal was stopped. Commanding officers should not be allowed to tie soldiers down in advance to accept something without protest before they even know what it is. Something is wrong with that set-up and it ought to be stopped. Something which happens in the Services far more often than the public realises is that a member of the Forces is placed in a position where he is bound to commit a crime. I have personal experience of this. I worked in a transport section of the R.A.F. during the war. We had to sign orders, saying that we fully understood them. One of these orders was that one had to have a form properly signed by one of a list of people detailed as capable of authorising transport. Without this form vehicles could not be moved. There was also another regulation stating that a man must obey any order given by any person of superior rank. So, if a person of superior rank comes along, as happened to me, and says, "Take out this car and go to so and so and pick up so and so," and he does not have the proper form, then whatever the man does he is wrong. If he takes the vehicle out he is wrong, because he has not got proper authorisation; and if he does not take it out he is disobeying the orders of someone of a higher rank than himself, and that is a crime.
This happened to me, and as it appeared to be rather a trivial thing I decided that the proper thing to do was to refuse to take the vehicle out, because I had not got the duly authorised form. The following day I was in front of the

C.O. for refusing to obey an order given to me by someone of a higher rank. I was asked the routine formula, "Will you accept my punishment?" As I felt I had done nothing wrong, I said "No". So I was told that the alternative was trial by court-martial.
I elected to have the trial by court-martial, and along came an officer to take what he called a summary of evidence. He visited me in the cells and asked me for a statement on how the affair arose. Therefore, I listed as witnesses the people I had asked to sign the document, saying that I had to have a form properly authorised and signed before I could take out a vehicle. I was politely told that I could not call them because they were not there at the time that this so-called crime happened. Did one ever hear anything so farcical in one's life? This is the law as it is administered in Her Majesty's Forces—or at least as it was administered during the war. As far as I know, it has not changed much.
If this is the sort of thing which goes on, is it surprising that the one question which every Service man keeps asking is, "When do I get discharged?" This is the one topic of conversation. If the Government do what I want them to do and give men the chance to resign when they want to resign, they will remove the main topic of conversation, just as when one is in a place like Singapore and the weather is practically the same all the year round there is no point in saying "Good morning" because every morning is a good morning.
This is not a joking matter. It is quite serious. It requires very careful attention, and it does not seem to have been taken care of in the Bill. The points to which I have referred require close examination to prevent this sort of situation from arising in future. I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to take them into consideration before the Bill is put on the Statute Book.

5.32 p.m.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: I believe that the Bill should have been called the "scrambag" Bill. In a warship, the scrambag is the bag in which all lost and found clothes and oddments are stowed away. In this scrambag today we find a mixture of the good, bad


and indifferent. Some of the things in it are well worn and comfortable garments which I recognise of old. Other things in it are quite new.
Clause 2 gives the Defence Council very wide powers, as has been pointed out by several hon. Members. The Minister explained in outline some of the reasons why he considers that the Clause is needed. One can see that the concept of a combined Ministry of Defence—of which, incidentally, I am 100 per cent. in favour—logically involves clearing away some of the anomalies in the conditions of service and enlistment in the three Armed Services. I hope that the Minister will be able to convince and assure us that this process will not be taken too far.
For example, the basic length of engagement or enlistment in the Royal Navy has usually been much longer than the basic enlistment in the other two Services. This is necessary for obvious reasons. However, I trust that the Minister can say that the primary consideration in a case like this will always be the needs of the Service.

Mr. Mulley: I can give the hon. and gallant Gentleman that assurance. He will recall from his own experience that the Royal Navy has enjoyed rather greater powers than it is proposed to give to the other two Services. I do not think that anyone would find that they have been abused over the years.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: I am very grateful for that assurance. I must admit that I am always a trifle suspicious of the D.C.C.S., the hidden directorate in the Ministry of Defence—the Director of Change for Change's Sake.
One inevitably wonders whether the additional powers foreshadowed in Clause 2 are designed to meet current difficulties in Regular recruiting. I should like to ask the Minister whether this is so and, if it is, whether he could give us some idea of the sort of schemes which the Ministry has in mind. In other words, what sort of ideas are included in what he called, rather nicely, "sophisticated inducements"? It may be that there are some very useful ideas here. But I hope that we can be assured that the Ministry will not play fast and loose, for instance, with the periods of Regular enlistment. There is a grave risk of getting the mem-

bers of the public whom we wish to recruit hopelessly confused. Young men considering making a career in any of the Services should not be enticed by shorter and shorter periods of service. This is definitely not the way to improve Regular recruiting.
I never agree with people who say that the relatively low pay which men get, or believe they get, in the Services is not a prime cause of difficulty in recruiting. I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would rule me out of order if I went much further into the problems of Regular recruiting, but I am very much in agreement with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot), who referred to the Government's action in sending the question of Service pay to the National Board for Prices and Incomes. This does not fill me with confidence as to the soundness of the Government's ideas on recruiting. It is, perhaps, not extraordinary that this point has been referred to by almost every Member who has spoken from these benches.
Why is Clause 2 singled out for introduction within one month of the passing of the Bill, whereas all the other Clauses, except Clause 19, which is linked with it, will come into force on 1st January, 1967? I do not know whether this is a significant point, but it would be interesting to know why this should be the case.
I pass to some of the other Clauses which I warmly welcome. Clause 10 concerns people who are newly enlisted. It would have been of assistance to Hannah Snell, who, as the Minister will know, was a young lady who enlisted in the Royal Marines about 200 years ago and served for many years in H.M.S. "Swallow". She might on occasion have had reason to be grateful for Clause 10 if she wanted to get out.
I welcome Clause 17, which is designed to operate against those who procure, persuade or assist deserters or absentees.
I welcome Clause 20, which lays down fines for disciplinary offences. As has been said, it will increase the powers of discretion available to courts-martial.
Clause 26 appears to give command of Her Majesty's military and air forces to people who may, in effect, be officers of


foreign powers. Fears have been expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) about the real meaning and purpose of the Clause. I do not understand the Clause. As my hon. Friend said, in present conditions in Central Africa, it could be a catastrophic idea to cast in the public's mind. My hon. Friend referred to the possibility of there being a sort of preview of some arrangements under the A.N.F. Like him, I am deeply suspicious of anything to do with the A.N.F.
Finally, I believe that the Bill puts the cart before the horse in a very important respect. This is the sort of consequential Bill which should have been brought forward after the defence review when we knew what the Government's broad thinking was on the subject of defence. Without the defence review, we are working on all these details very much in a vacuum. I hope that whoever is to reply for the Government will be quite specific on this point. Why have we not had their long promised defence review, and when can we expect it?

5.40 p.m.

Captain Walter Elliot: I wish to take a little further the point which has been raised on Clause 2 and the power of the Defence Council to make Regulations, relating it specifically to the Government's reference of the Forces pay review to the National Board for Prices and Incomes. When I spoke a few days ago in the debate on the Pensions (Increase) Bill, I said that I had in one hand the Bill which would give an increase in public service pensions but in the other I held a scruffy bit of paper issued by the Government, which I had obtained from the Vote Office, which told me that certain pensioners would not get the pensions increase. That seemed to me then a most deplorable state of affairs for the House of Commons to be in, with all its great traditions, and I feel that the position is much the same on this occasion, except for a slight technicality to which I shall come in a moment.
Clause 2 will give to the Defence Council power to make Regulations governing the terms of enlistment, and I

direct particular attention to the passage in subsection (3) which provides that
no provision of the regulation shall be so framed so as, except with the consent of that person, to vary or revoke a right to which he is entitled …
The Grigg Report recommending a biennial review of Service pay and pensions was accepted by the previous Conservative Government and is accepted by the Conservative Party today. I believe that it was accepted by the Socialist Party and I had hoped that it was accepted by the Socialist Government. I understand that this principle of biennial review has been written into recruiting pamphlets. I have not got one with me, but I am so informed. It has certainly received great publicity in the newspapers, and I have talked about it in my constituency, as, no doubt, many other hon. Members have. Yet it seems that this principle of biennial review is to be abandoned.
I hope that the Government will not take refuge behind the next words in subsection (3) which refer to a right to which a person is entitled
by or under any Act of Parliament".
The Grigg biennial review is not, I believe, covered by an Act of Parliament so that, sticking to the letter of the law, I suppose that the Government could get away with it. Nevertheless, I assure them that, whether it be covered by the letter of the law or not, it is accepted throughout the Services today as a built-in condition of Service which is greatly valued. If the Government, by some rather cynical use of the law, try to get away with what we suspect they are doing, they will cause a great deal of trouble.
I do not want to be alarmist—I am sorry that the Navy Minister is not here—but I cannot help reminding the House that there was a very good book written about troubles—to put it no higher—in the Navy over the centuries, and these troubles were always caused by interference with pay or by bad food. If these two things are right, the Navy will operate in practically any conditions. Let us remember that the last troubles in the Navy were caused by interference in the pay structure. I warn the Government not to take this matter too lightly. If changes are absolutely vital, they must not be made without the fullest and most careful consultation with all the professional officers concerned.
In opening, the Minister spoke of the harmonious integration of the Services. I have a small point to raise in this connection, following something said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Read-Admiral Morgan Giles) about the importance of ironing out all the anomalies between the Services. Clause 20, with reference to the Army and the Air Force, provides for the substitute of a fine for forfeiture of a sum from pay. Incidentally, before going further, I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) made an interesting point about the difference there can be between a fine or the penalty of docked pay. If a man loses three days' pay, presumably, he does not pay Income Tax on it, whereas, if he is fined an equivalent amount, he still has to pay the Income Tax on his pay. This can make quite a big percentage difference to the fine. In the Navy, for example, the forfeiture of 10 days' pay for the extended breaking of leave or something like that, is not uncommon, and we do not want the penalty to be increased by 30 or 40 per cent. This can be an important matter.
The particular point which I wish to make on Clause 20 arises because, for the Army and the Air Force, there is a specific reference in Subsection (5) to special fines peculiar to the offence of drunkenness. In the Navy, drunkenness is not looked on, rightly or wrongly, as a crime—at least, it was not when I was in the Navy—and it is treated as a special offence. I do not know why it should be differently regarded in the Army and the Air Force. This is a small point—no doubt, but there may be many others like it—and I suggest that it would be useful to try to bring the three Services into line on it. They will always be working together, and differences create a certain amount of difficulty and, perhaps, dissatisfaction. Although, as I say, it is only a small matter, I draw it to the attention of the Government as one worthy of consideration, having in mind the wider aim of trying to iron out anomalies of all sorts.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. James Allason: It is rather noteworthy that every back bencher on the Government side has condemned the Government for their

handling of the matter of pay increases under the Grigg award. I think that the Government are, perhaps, looking at the Grigg system the wrong way. Grigg suggests that the pay of the Forces should be reviewed every two years, and that it should be brought up to make good the difference which has occurred between the Forces pay and the pay in civil industry in the two-year period. The reference to the Prices and Incomes Board is for a different purpose, to prevent a future award which would be inflationary for the nation. But this award cannot be in any way inflationary. It is only to give to the Service man what he is justly entitled to, and I deeply regret, therefore, that the Government have seen fit to make this reference.
The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) reminded the House of his filibuster which brought about the creation of the Select Committee. I was getting the worm's eye view of that, because at that time I was in charge of the discipline branch at the War Office, which was very considerably interested. I had to complain that it would be quite impossible for me to try to cope with the workings of the Select Committee and continue to administer the normal discipline in the Army, and so another branch was rapidly formed, and I am happy that I did not have to deal with the Select Committee but continued to operate the ordinary discipline of the Army. However, this did give me some experience of the operation of the civil and military courts, and the contradistinction which has been described by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner).
In Clause 24 there is a proposal to make two considerable changes. The first is a change in the concept of the whole law of the land, in that under the present civil law one can claim bar to trial if one has already been charged with exactly the same offence, as my hon. and learned Friend has described. Under this new system it becomes
substantially the same as that offence".
The second major change is on the question whether the civil law is paramount in this country.
As regards the first very considerable change, what exactly is meant by
an offence substantially the same as that offence"?


Is it arising out of the same circumstances? This produces many dangerous grounds, because similar circumstances can give rise to a great variety of offences. I think this idea is very unfortunate.
The question whether the civil law is paramount is also of very great interest. Under the old Army Act, Section 133, which Clause 24 seeks to replace, it is stated:
Nothing in this Act restricts the offences for which persons may be tried by any civil court".
The Minister of Defence for the Army was very complimentary about military courts, unlike his hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig). On balance between the two, I would agree with the right hon. Gentleman rather than his hon. Friend. Nevertheless, I think he overdid it. I think it was in practically the first case heard by the court-martial appeals court by the then Lord Chief Justice that he said that a court-martial sitting under a palm tree could hardly reproduce exactly the conditions of justice which would occur in the Old Bailey. There is the concept of jungle justice; it is a little bit rough and ready. I think this is inevitable when we consider the system which is in operation. First, a quite junior officer, a company commander, is allowed to dispense justice; he may not be a very great expert on it. This is a rough and ready system, but, of course, this will be a trial which bars any possible recourse to a civil trial afterwards.
Then again, there is the decision of the commanding officer. He can decide either to send the accused to trial by court martial or he can offer to the accused summary jurisdiction. Of course, on these occasions there is a strong limit to what punishments the commanding officer may give. This is obviously rough justice being administered at this time. The reason for it is that justice needs to be done quickly, and, of course, the commanding officer knows his man personally, whereas in most cases in police courts the magistrate usually does not quite so well know his man.
I personally have had experience of the anomalies which arise under the present system where there is a tug of war between the civil courts and the military courts, and possibly a double trial. This certainly can happen, and it is permitted

to happen under the present system. Usually this can be explained to the man. A man has a sense of grievance; he has the idea at the back of his mind that if he is tried for one sort of offence on one occasion he cannot be tried for it again. Of course, he is wrong, because the only bar to another trial at the moment is that he cannot be tried for precisely that same offence. It is perfectly possible to explain to people how it is that this comes about. On the other hand, I have a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army who tells me that he can find no trace of this happening. I think he may be correct in saying there has been no case where there has genuinely been a trial by both civil and military courts on precisely and exactly the same charge. Here, however, we are going very much wider than exactly the same charge. We are going to make it "substantially" the same. That is a very different cup of tea indeed.
Of course, if there had not been this trouble there would be no reason for a change, except the reason of uniformity. I should like just to go into the proposals in subsection (2). The first provision is that an unconfirmed or quashed court martial decision shall be no bar to civil trial, whereas if there has been a summary award which is subsequently quashed there shall be a bar to trial. This is a remarkable distinction, which I think would not be there at all had it not been for the fact that it occurs in Section 134 of the old Army Act, though there, of course, it is in entirely different circumstances. It refers there to where there has been a military trial which has been quashed, and then sets out the circumstances in which there could be another military trial. That is quite different from the position where there has been a military trial and, subsequently, a civil trial.
To return to the effect of this change as it is going to occur, paragraph 734 of Queen's Regulations lays down how the commanding officer is to proceed. If some really serious offence is committed, he has to report it to the police. The cases which he has to report are treason, murder, manslaughter, treason-felony, rape, and sexual assault on a civilian, which are all very serious offences. Then there is one other type of offence which


is not quite so serious, where the person or property of a civilian is involved.
In all other cases the commanding officer can deal with the accused, but that would be totally unacceptable in the new circumstances. For example, there might be a minor punch-up in barracks. One could say that that was just an ordinary military event which ought to be tried quickly by the military authorities. If it was so tried, it would be a bar to any possible civil charge.
Paragraph 734 of Queen's Regulations will have to be varied so that any offence which has a corresponding civil offence attached to it must be reported to the police. It means that a minor punch-up in barracks must be reported to the police by the commanding officer. The police are then in duty bound to investigate it. They come bumbling into the barracks taking statements from everyone and generally wasting time, and finally say that they will not prosecute. Then, at last, the commanding officer can get on and deal with that minor offence.
In the case of traffic accidents, it is necessary that the civil authorities should intervene, because now we have an arrangement under which a driving licence is suspended on the third endorsement. So far as I am aware, the military law does not give any sanction for endorsing licences. In a case of dangerous driving, which is a serious offence, and even in a case of speeding the licence ought to be endorsed. There should be the sanction. It is not fair that a soldier should have a different range of justice from the civilian. The licence ought to be endorsed, with the possibility that the licence ultimately may be lost.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy is not so prejudiced in favour of the Navy that he will not be prepared to look again and see whether it is not perhaps the Navy which is out of step. The Navy has always had the tradition that its trials are fierce, harsh and speedy and that there is no need for civil intervention at all. The man is flogged, and the ship sails away, and it is quite unnecessary to consider any civil trial. We have moved a little bit from that conception of justice, and it seems to me sensible that, if there should be a change, it should be in favour of the retention of the tried Army and Air Force procedure

and that, for once, the Navy might come into line.

6.4 p.m.

Mr. Humphrey Atkins: I am glad to be able to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) that flogging had been abolished in the Navy even when I was in it a year or two ago.
Like several speakers in the debate, I want to refer briefly to Clause 2 of the Bill. It was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell), and I want to expand a little on what he said. As I understand it, the Clause is asking the House for a considerable departure from the practice of many years standing. The terms and conditions for entering into and service in the Services have always been approved by the House in an Act. There was a period when the Act had to be looked at annually so that we could discuss the detail of it every year. Then it was made a five-yearly Act and we only had a chance to discuss it in detail once every five years. Now, as I understand it, we shall not be able to discuss it in detail at all, because the terms and conditions are to be made by Regulation.
I must ask the hon. Gentleman who is going to wind up to turn up the point about whether these Regulations are subject to affirmative or negative procedure, because I understood his right hon. Friend to say one thing whereas the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill says another.
However, it does not matter which it is for the purpose of my argument. From the passage of the Bill, if the Clause is still in it when it passes, we shall not be able to discuss the Regulations in detail because we cannot put down amendments to them. We can only approve or disapprove of the whole list of items in the Regulations which the Defence Council will make.
There was only one hon. Gentleman who spoke in the debate today who did not refer to recruitment, and that is evidence enough to show how interested we in the House are in these matters. We always have been, and I do not doubt that we always shall be.
The Regulations that the Defence Council are going to make will have a


tremendous effect on recruitment, and some very good reason must be given to us before we give the Government power to make Regulations instead of coming for an Act of Parliament. The only reason advanced so far is that the Government will find it more convenient. Obviously they will. Governments always find it convenient to be able to do things without Parliament interfering too much, and that is what Parliament is about. We ought to be able to interfere, to cross-question and examine the Government not only on major matters of policy but on the details, too.
If that is the only reason for asking the House to give the Government power to make Regulations on such an important matter, whereas before they had to come for an Act of Parliament, I shall not be very inclined to grant them. Could the hon. Gentleman the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy give us any other reason? Can he say, for example, that the Ministry of Defence has been embarrassed in some way because it has not got the power? There may be other reasons, but I hope that he will deal with it, because we want a more convincing explanation than we have had so far.
With that proviso, may I say that I welcome the Bill? It is said to go a little way towards the unification of the Services. I believe that object is an excellent one. I do not think that it goes very far, but let us not criticise it for that. It goes some way, and for that reason I welcome it, subject to the proviso that I have made.

6.9 p.m.

The Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy (Mr. Christopher Mayhew): May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) on what I believe to have been his maiden speech as a Defence spokesman at the Dispatch Box. The Bill, though a good one, is complicated. It does not lend itself easily to great feats of oratory, but the hon. Gentleman put a number of very fair points very clearly, some of them constructive ones, and I am very grateful to him.
A great deal of the discussion has centred round Clause 2. It has been referred to by the hon. Member for

Merton and Morden (Mr. Atkins), and perhaps I can begin by making one or two references to it.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether this procedure was being adopted merely to save the Government trouble. I assure him that is not so. The fact is that the whole business of enlistment necessarily becomes more and more sophisticated every day. A greater variety of skills is required in the Services, we are up again keener competition from other would-be recruiters, and the need for speed and flexibility in recruitment and enlistment is increasing all the time. That is one substantial reason for the proposed change.
I think that at the same time I can answer the hon. Gentleman's other point about the inability to amend Regulations. My answer to that is that these Regulations are going to be very detailed in themselves. Perhaps I could give three examples of Regulations which we would propose to bring in very quickly because we need them urgently. We would want to pass a Regulation to enable women in the Navy to come into line with women in the Army and Royal Air Force and reckon short-service engagements from an age below 18. We would want to pass a Regulation to allow Gurkhas to enlist for less than 22 years. We would also want to pass a Regulation to allow women to enlist for 6 years, with a break point after 4 years. It is true that one cannot amend Regulations, but, equally, they are very detailed, and I think that the Regulation procedure is much better than legislation for things of that kind. I think that the House will accept that when it reflects on it. Thus, I think that the great advantage of Clause 2 is that it meets our need for an efficient, flexible means of changing the terms of enlistment.
That, I think, answers the point Made by the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles). I was sorry that I was not here when he spoke. I understand that he asked why the Act runs out at a slightly striking time, that is not before 1st January, 1967, which one might have expected, but the
said sections 2 and 19 shall come into operation at the expiration of the period of one month beginning with the date of the passing of this Act.


That will be before 1st January, 1967, if all goes well. The reason is simply that we want to get on with this kind of Regulation which has been held up for lack of legislative time. We want to get on quickly with these regulations in advance of the whole Act coming into operation. I hope that that answers the hon. and gallant Gentleman.

Rear Admiral Morgan Giles: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves Clause 2, will he deal with the point about whether it is the intention to fragment engagements and make them shorter and shorter, which is rather more important than the point with which he has dealt?

Mr. Mayhew: I am sorry that I did not hear the hon. and gallant Gentleman deploy his arguments on this point, but I shall study them in due course. The Navy is considering coming into line with the Army and Royal Air Force with regard to giving a right to a recruit to discharge himself very early in his period of recruitment. That is something which we are going to get, but I should like to study the hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech if I may replying to his other point.
The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South asked why Clause 2 does not repeal a lot of other legislation. I hope that what I have said will convince the hon. Gentleman that we have here a weapon for rationalising the whole business of enlistment by these Regulations which will appeal and amend previous legislation. Perhaps this point has escaped the notice of the House. We could not repeal those Sections of the Army and Air Force Acts to which Clause 2 refers because, when the Act came in, the previous legislation having been repealed, we would be in the difficult position of putting forward Regulations to replace the repealed legislation, and if the House were to annul one of Regulations, or to resolve against it, all recruiting would come to a halt. For that reason, while Clause 2 in effect replaces the enlistment provisions of the Army and Air Force Acts, we do not specifically repeal them in the Bill. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's point.
The question of negative or affirmative procedure has been raised. This is the

familiar negative Resolution point. Obviously there is a difference here between Regulations which do and do not amend existing legislation. As the House knows, a Regulation which amends existing legislation does not take effect until 40 days after it has been laid before Parliament. The House can resolve that no further proceedings be taken on the Regulation, in which case nothing else happens to it, but unless the House so resolves, after 40 days it becomes effective. A Regulation which does not amend legislation becomes effective as soon as it is laid and continues to be effective unless annulled by Prayer of the House. That is the procedure, and I hope that I have made that clear.
The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South also asked whether Clause 2(3), which safeguards the existing rights of Service men, will safeguard the rights which they will acquire under Regulations made under the Bill. My answer is, "Yes", and I think it is plain from the subsection which he quoted. It says that there is no power
to vary or revoke a right to which he is entitled by or under any Act of Parliament (including this Act) …
The important word is "under". Therefore, any right that he gets under a Regulation under this Bill is safeguarded. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman.
I think that I have mentioned the draft Regulations under Clause 2, and perhaps I might now deal briefly with one or two subjects which have been raised during the debate, but which are not strictly concerned with the Bill, though obviously they have a bearing on it.
A number of hon. Members have mentioned the procedure for Services' pay. The Government are not setting aside the principles recommended in the Grigg Report. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary said on 25th November that the Government's incomes policy
is a policy that applies to all incomes. It is not intended as a restraint on incomes, but as a way in which rises in incomes may be tested on their merits and criteria against a national policy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1965; Vol. 721, c. 769.]
I stress again that my right hon. Friend's statement made the point clearly that the Board is being asked to pay special regard to the need of the Services to recruit and


retain on a voluntary basis sufficient men to meet the commitments of the Services, and the special features of Service life.
Clearly Service men and Service Ministers are very anxious that the procedures for determining Services' pay shall be absolutely fair, but they feel even greater concern that whatever procedures are used the final pay award should do justice to Service men. That decision, of course, has not yet been made. This subject could, I suggest, be better debated when the decision comes before Parliament, as it will.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Can the hon. Gentleman say in what form that will come before Parliament, and also perhaps when he expects it so to come?

Mr. Mayhew: I think I shall leave that to the Leader of the House. That is not a matter for me at this moment.

Mr. Bell: I appreciate that when it may come before Parliament may be a matter for the Leader of the House, but how it comes is surely a matter on which the hon. Gentleman can help us?

Mr. Mayhew: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is correct about that either, although both when and how are matters on which I shall certainly want to consult my right hon. Friend before I make any statement.
I appreciate, as we all do, the tremendous importance of re-engagement, even as against recruitment, because certainly from the Navy's point of view—and this applies to all Services—a man who re-engages is from that time onwards a much more valuable member of the Service than a man who is recruited and has to he trained and taught the necessary skills, and then gain experience.
We appreciate the enormous importance of encouraging re-engagement, and I very much regret having to give the House disappointing figures concerning re-engagement in recent months. The required re-engagement rate for naval ratings on 12-year engagements is 65 per cent., and for those on nine-year engagements, 50 per cent. For those in the first category the rate has fallen from 54 per cent. in 1963 to only 48 per cent. today. and for those in the latter category from 33 per cent. in 1964 to only 24 per cent. today.
The Army requirement is for a 100 per cent. re-engagement of technicians and the higher skilled tradesmen at the six and nine-year option points, and 60 per cent. and 40 per cent., respectively, for all other men. The rate of re-engagement at the first option point—that is, after six years' service—is about 40 per cent., and at the second option point the evidence shows that the overall re-engagement rate is no more than 35 per cent. The number of airmen prepared to extend their service fell in the past two years from 9,800 to 3,460, leading to a shortfall in the current year of 45 per cent. against the requirement. These are disturbing figures and we shall no doubt debate them in the months ahead.

Captain W. Elliot: Can the Minister give any figures concerning Fleet Air Arm aircrew, in respect of which I understand there is some difficulty?

Mr. Mayhew: Speaking from memory—recruitment for Fleet Air Arm aircrew has held up quite well but re-engagement is far from satisfactory. If the hon. and gallant Member will put down a Question I will gladly take the matter up and give him the figures.
I now return to the Bill. I was asked by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South about Clause 4(4) and (5). He asked me who was the "competent authority" referred to there, who may order the continuance in service of naval ratings, and whether it should not be specified as the Defence Council. I do not think that there is any point of substance between us, because Clause 14 defines "competent authority" as
the Defence Council or an officer prescribed by Regulations of the Defence Council to act",
and so on. The important decisions taken under Clause 4 are those referred to in subsection (1). Those decisions are naturally taken by the Defence Council, where a state of war exists or warlike operations are in preparation, and so on. There is no question of devolving the Council's responsibility once those circumstances exist. But once we are in a situation envisaged in subsection (1) it is clear that the actual work of retaining certain ratings in service must be devolved by the Defence Council. It is not a matter for the Defence Council


to handle itself. I hope that that makes the position clear.
Several questions have been raised on Clauses 5 and 12. Members have asked what is the point of changing the old form of issuing a proclamation to acting by a Queen's Order. I want to make it clear that there is no change of substance. The decision is made by the same people and on the same grounds as before. The decision is the act of Her Majesty, on the recommendation of the Secretary of State for Defence, taken by the same people for the same reasons and in the same kind of circumstances as before. All that has been altered is the machinery. At present it is ancient and inconvenient. It involves the issuing of an order by the Queen, the affixing of the Royal Seal, and the publication in the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes. That may have been all right in the old days but in the nuclear age, while the count-down is in progress, waiting for the Belfast Gazette to come out does not match the needs of the moment.
This is a simple procedure and we think that it is a better way of going about the matter. We are all for perpetuating ancient history in certain fields of Service life in order to maintain the spirit of a ship, a squadron or regiment, but not in the case of issuing a proclamation.
The hon. Member went on to refer to Clause 15, which empowers Her Majesty's Forces to arrest and hold in custody a person subject to Service law who is arrested or about to be arrested by local authorities abroad. It is only right that this Clause should be fully examined. The taking into custody of such people in such circumstances already goes on. What we have not got is statutory authority to do so. A person so taken into custody can simply walk out of the guardroom at present. The matter is on an informal and voluntary basis.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Can the Minister explain how a man can be arrested by consent?

Mr. Mayhew: I said "taken into custody". Here lies the basis of the misunderstanding between some hon. Members opposite and myself. In my view "taken into custody" is a much better phrase. We would not charge such persons.
In speaking of subsection (8) the hon. Member failed to grasp the fact that what we are doing is to take into British Service custody someone who otherwise would be incarcerated in a local gaol. Thus, it is not appropriate for hon. Members to ask for what length of time we should hold him, and whether there would be sufficient safeguards against our holding him for too long. As soon as the trial comes on, or as soon as the charge is dropped, we release him from custody. But there is no point in releasing him from custody if the only effect is for him to be snapped up by the local police and put into a local gaol.
The procedure in respect of the Regulations referred to in subsection (7) lays down the number of actions required to be taken, such as the making of reports. If it were strongly felt that these Regulations should be in statutory form the question could be discussed, but I want to impress upon the House that these provisions will be formalising something that exists, and by preventing the arrest and gaoling of Service men we are doing something which may be in their interests and in the interests of the Service.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: The hon. Member has explained Clause 15 very satisfactorily, except for one thing. I do not understand why, in subsection (5,a), the man, who may be described as having been taken into custody more or less for his own protection, may afterwards be handed over to the local authorities.

Mr. Mayhew: This is because we do not contest the right of the local authorities to try such men. We cannot do that. Therefore, when the time for his trial comes on, he is handed over.
I now turn to Clause 17, which deals with desertion. It covers a quite simple point. It is already an offence to persuade or assist a Service man to desert or to go absent. This is already covered by the Discipline Acts. But it is not an offence to persuade or assist him to remain a deserter or absentee. We did not think that the law covered this point, and this Clause is merely designed to do so. It is not wholly academic. There have been one or two cases of this recently and we think that it is necessary.
Clause 18 is about Ireland. The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South was not sure why the Clause is in the Bill. The point is that the Ireland Act, 1949, declared Eire not to be a dominion but also that it should not be treated as a foreign country for the purposes of United Kindom law. The subsequent 1950 Army and Air Force (Annual) Act tried as best it could to make sense of this in terms of Service legislation but failed. It did not matter so much then, because Irish Servicemen at that time were all British citizens. Today, the new recruits are not British citizens, and certain anomalies arise.
We want to ensure that Irish Servicemen today are not aliens. If the House pressed me to explain exactly how the 1950 Act tried and failed to get over this difficulty and exactly how the Bill gets over it, Et would take me some time and would be a little complicated. An Irishman once declared that, not being a bird, he could not be in two places at once. Clause 18 is an attempt by the Ministry of Defence to get him out of this difficulty.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Am I right then in thinking that the effect of Clause 18 will be that an Irishman is not a member of the Commonwealth, he is not a British subject and he is not a foreigner? What is he? [An HON. MEMBER: "An Irishman."]

Mr. Mayhew: I think that is true. That explains my bird story.
The hon. Member asked why Clause 19(1) is necessary. I think that that was answered by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Secretary of State: it is to bring in the Commonwealth as well as foreign countries.
He also asked about subsection (2), which deals with declarations of active service. The present position is that the Governor of a Colony can declare active service, but we are worried about the protectorates—particularly, around Aden and Brunei—which do not have Governors. This Clause, I think sensibly, makes the forces commander the declarer of active service, with, of course, consultation with the Governor if there is a Governor—if it is a Colony—and, wherever possible, prior agreement by the Secretary of State for Defence.
I now come to the two Clauses which have given rise to most discussion, Clauses 24 and 25. The hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) declared that they represented a tremendous breach of some ancient principle of law. If so, it is a breach which has been part of naval law for many years. The Navy already debars trial for the same offence by a civil court——

Mr. Allason: How does the hon. Gentleman explain, then, the express extension from the same offence to the same or similar offences? This is the point which my hon. and learned Friend was making.

Mr. Mayhew: The Navy has had civil trial for the same offence barred for many years. The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) slightly ruffled naval feathers with his speech. He spoke of flogging and of harsh and summary naval discipline. I will point out to him—I do not know how seriously he meant these things—that naval law is summary but it is not harsh. It has to be summary, as we all know—the Select Committee went into this in great depth—because powers of summary punishment must be in the hands of commanders of warships. It must be so.
A very interesting example of why it must be so occurred not long ago. H.M.S. "Protector" was due for a six months' cruise in the Arctic ice. Just after she sailed, a rating committed an offence which in the Army or the R.A.F. would have required a court-martial. If the Navy had not had these powers of summary punishment the situation would have been very awkward. Either the man would have been under arrest for six months and useless to the ship, or the ship would have had to go back to Simonstown or Portsmouth for a court-martial.
I cannot imagine an equivalent difficulty arising in the Army or the R.A.F., which shows why we must have summary powers of naval discipline which are not needed in the other Services.

Mr. Allason: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman wants to be fair. He will recall that I was speculating on the origins of the Navy getting out of step. I therefore expressly talked about a ship sailing away and gave the precise example which he has quoted.

Mr. Mayhew: I accept completely what the hon. Member says.
Clauses 24 and 25 bring the Services together. The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South quoted parts of the Bill and suggested that there are anomalies in it between one Service and another. I have read and reread these Clauses and I cannot see this difficulty. I can assure him that the intention is to bring all the Services together in this by means of the phrase "substantially the same". If the Bill does not do this, we shall have every opportunity of making Amendments. I cannot see the anomalies which the hon. Member mentioned.
As to what "substantially the same" means, the intention is to deal with offences which are different in wording but are the same. Otherwise, a civil court might be in the position of virtually having to try something which to any common sense view was the same offence. With great respect to the hon. and learned Member for Billericay, that is contrary to an even greater principle of common law—that a man should not be tried twice for the same offence. This is what we are trying to do and I believe it is what all hon. Members wish to do. I think that these two Clauses fulfil this intention, if they do not, we shall have plenty of time to change them.
I hope that I have covered most of the main points made in the debate. Obviously, this is not a spectacular Bill, nor is it one which lends itself to oratory, but, certainly from the Government's point of view, we have had a useful discussion. The Bill will lead forward to a great cleaning up of Service legislation. The powers to make Regulations will help especially towards this. It is also a Bill which brings the Services very closely together. The actual framing of the Bill was a piece of inter-Service collaboration which was extremely smooth and helpful.
As the Secretary of State for Defence explained not long ago, Service Ministers are now becoming increasingly concerned with various functional subjects in all three Services. This has been part of the work of making the Bill. As I have responsibility across the board for personnel, I was able, with the good will of my Service colleagues, to take a tri-Service approach to the Bill. As I said, it is not a spectacular Measure, but it leads us

forward, and brings the Services closer together. That is the spirit in which I recommend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Select Committee.—[Mr. Ifor Davies.]

Orders of the Day — ARMY ACT 1955 (CONTINUATION) ORDER

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That the Army Act 1955 (Continuation) Order 1965, a draft of which was laid before this House on 9th November, be approved.—[Mr. Mulley.]

6.40 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: On a point of order. Orders of this sort have, I think, been before the House in three previous years. On two of these occasions they have been taken formally and the debate has followed on the Adjournment, which, indeed, is, as I understand, about to happen, though not directly and formally on a defence subject. On the third occasion, however, a debate took place upon the Orders and turned upon morale and the recruitment of the Forces.
The reason why I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, is that it is the view of the Opposition that both the morale and the recruitment of the Forces are gravely affected by the decision which the Government have taken to refer Forces' pay to the Prices and Incomes Board. This is a matter which we should feel it our duty to raise on the renewal of these Orders if that were within the scope of the debate. I should be very grateful if you would indicate whether that would be in Order upon the Motion.

Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), who is always courteous and respectful to the Chair and to the Standing Orders of the House. The position is quite simple. We are debating on this Order whether the Army Act should be renewed for one year. The only speeches which are in order are those which advocate that the Army Act should be renewed for one year or should not be renewed for one year giving reasons in the Act why it should or should


not be renewed. This debate is very narrow. It may have been broadened on the occasion to which the right hon. Gentleman refers but the right hon. Gentleman is right in assuming that to raise other matters would not be in order.

6.42 p.m.

The Deputy Secretary of State for Defence and Minister of Defence for the Army (Mr. Frederick Mulley): Perhaps I should explain why I did not seek to make an introductory speech in support of my request to the House for the continuation of this Order. The sole and simple reason was that the subject matter of the Order is precisely the same as that contained in the Second Reading debate which has just concluded. In fact, I would suggest that the subject matter of the Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill, which proposed in future years for similar continuation Orders to be moved each year, was wider than the scope of the continuation Order. I intended no disrespect to the House but I thought that, having had a debate on Second Reading, the House would not wish to debate separately each of these Orders.

Question put, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — AIR FORCE ACT 1955 (CONTINUATION) ORDER

Air Force Act 1955 (Continuation) Order 1965 [draft laid before the House 9th November], approved.—[Mr. Millan.]

Orders of the Day — F.111 AIRCRAFT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ifor Davies.]

6.43 p.m.

Mr. Robert Carr: I am grateful to the Government for finding time for this debate on the important question of what sort of advance strike reconnaissance aircraft, if any, this country should order in the future. Before I embark on the substance of the matter I might say that I hope that it will be acceptable to back bench Members on both sides of the House that there will be only one Front Bench speech from each side. I therefore hope that the Minister of Aviation will be able to reply not only to the points which I shall make but to all those made by my hon. Friends and by hon. Members opposite.
If we on this side of the House are gratified that the Government have found time for this debate, we are even more gratified that they have taken action which in a sense makes this debate almost unnecessary and certainly much less necessary than it was. In other words, I am gratified by the statement which the Secretary of State for Defence made to the House this afternoon. I was hardly surprised by it because it had been obvious for some days that the Government had taken fright and would run for cover. We feel on the Opposition benches that we have won our point, or at least the first point which we have to win in this issue, because this debate marks the successful culmination of Opposition pressure to avoid the folly of making another major decision on an ad hoc basis without reference to any underlying or coherent policy.
I say "successful culmination", because I do not believe for one moment that we should have had today's statement from the Secretary of State for Defence unless there had been constant pressure on the Government, including in particular the pressure last week for the debate on this subject. It was only on the understanding that specific undertakings would be given by the Government to the House today that the Opposition agreed to debate this matter on a Motion for the Adjournment rather


than to divide the House on a substantive Motion.

The Minister of Aviation (Mr. Roy Jenkins): Before the right hon. Gentleman makes too much of that point, did he not hear the Secretary of State for Defence say this afternoon that 10 days ago he initiated action for this postponement?

Mr. Carr: I certainly heard the Secretary of State for Defence say those words, but I do not think that I was particularly impressed by them any more than were the great majority of hon. Members. It seemed to me that what he was saying was that Mr. Kuss would leave without his expected Christmas present, thanks to the actions of hon. Members, mostly on this side of the House, but by no means all on this side of the House. I give honour to those hon. Members on the Government side of the House who also exerted pressure and made the Government quite clearly realise that they could not face a division on this issue but, as I said a few moments ago, would have to run for cover.
Although we are gratified by the assurances which we have had from the Government today, I want to make it quite clear that we must still press for one more assurance at this stage. I think that it will be given because I think that it was implied by what the Secretary of State for Defence said, but I should like the Minister of Aviation to make it clear when he winds up the debate. There is a Motion on the Order Paper standing in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), some of my other hon. Friends and myself. In it we ask that no decision should be taken about this aircraft until after the House has debated the Plowden Report. I do not think that this is an issue between us. I think that it was implied by what the Secretary of State for Defence said, but to be quite sure where we stand I should like the right hon. Gentleman to dot the i's and cross the t's on this point.
I emphasise that while we have forced the Government to concede our point on this issue, namely the agreement to defer the decision until after the Plowden Report and now until after the Defence Review, too, has been completed and

considered, we must raise a further point which in our view the Government must concede and which in the end is more important still. It is not enough for the Government just to defer the decision as a matter of form. I have a nasty feeling that that is all that this may be. I could not help noticing that the Secretary of State for Defence used the words "proposed to buy". This is not the first time that I have heard the Secretary of State for Defence speak in terms which give a possible indication that his mind is already pretty firmly made up in favour of one particular plane. The Government must convince the House that this is not just a formal deferment and that they will use the extra time which they have now taken to consider more fully all the possible alternatives and to weigh up the consequences of each. Moreover, they will have to satisfy the House by providing concrete information to justify whatever decision they finally arrive at—and it is on that aspect that we wish to press the Government hard in this debate.
First, let us look at the background to this decision and be in no doubt about how great the importance of it is to the aircraft industry. Before the General Election in 1964 the Labour Party in general, and the Prime Minister in particular, made a major theme of promises that a Labour Government would encourage and stimulate industries which were major export earners, major import savers, and which were technically advanced and progressive. One would have thought, therefore, that the aircraft industry qualified par excellence under all those headings and would have been one of the Government's most favoured children.
The export figures of the industry are probably running at about £150 million for this year and have averaged well over £100 million a year for the last five years. The import saving nature of this industry is made clear by the enormous cost to our balance of payments of the purchase of American aircraft to which Her Majesty's Government are already committed, and which would, of course, be greatly increased should the Government decide to order the F.111.
That the industry is technically advanced is obvious and it needs no elaboration. As I have said, with all their talk before the General Election of


stimulating the technically progressive export-earning and import-saving industries, one would have thought that this industry would have qualified for, if anything, special favour under a Labour Government; yet, in practice, the Labour Government's actions so far seem to have been designed to wreck the industry.
Right hon. Gentlemen opposite quickly cancelled three of the most important and technically advanced projects, and had it not been for President de Gaulle the Concord would most probably have been killed as well. Their actions have undoubtedly most severely damaged British technology and have added many hundreds of millions of £s to our import bill over the next few years at a time when the Government have been saying that the balance of payment is the number one problem for Britain.
They have not only added to the import bill but have seriously reduced our export potential, not just through loss of exports of the planes which will now never be produced but also by the effect on the sales of British planes which are already in production. The credibility of the industry in the eyes of its potential customers throughout the world has been dealt a grievous blow, and the salesmen of the American aircraft industry must have been jumping for joy during 1965 at the sight of Her Majesty's Government delivering world markets into their hands.
Even if it had been right—which, of course, it was not—to cancel all three of those major new projects, the method and timing of doing so was, in the opinion of my hon. Friends and myself, nothing less than criminal lunacy. Before such a wholesale cancellation the Government should first have determined what the future rôle of the aircraft industry was to be. Instead, they cancelled the projects first and appointed the Plowden Committee afterwards.
Having created that vacuum and then appointed the Plowden Committee, the Government were clearly under a duty not to make major decisions until the Plowden Committee had reported, until its Report had been properly and fully considered not only by Ministers in private but by this House in public—

Mr. Roy Jenkins: I am aware that it may be a little difficult, with the quick

changes on the Opposition Front Bench, to get consistency of policy, but may I remind the right hon. Gentleman that when I announced the appointment of the Plowden Committee almost exactly a year ago the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maude), when occupying the position which the right hon. Gentleman now occupies, specifically asked me not to hold up decisions on projects until that Committee reported?

Mr. Carr: My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maude) is unfortunately not here. [Laughter.] I do not know what hon. Gentlemen opposite find amusing. I am not aware of the presence of the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) in the House, which provides an exactly comparable case. As hon. Members are aware, our duties in the House change. However, I suspect that if my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon were here he would make it very clear to the Minister that he was asking the Government not to hold up positive decisions on projects; in other words, not to hold up decisions on projects which would provide work for the industry. We have gone through this year with virtually not a single production order for the aircraft industry. This is the sort of plan, poised for instant action—was that the phrase?—that we have had; one year and not a single production order, but a string of cancellations.
It would certainly have been wrong to take a decision about what sort of new advance strike reconnaissance aircraft this country should order until the Plowden Report had appeared—and I was saying that this should not be done until that Report had been considered not only by Ministers in private but by the House in public.
One need only look at the alternatives to see the importance of the decision to our aircraft industry. Let us consider these alternatives. First, there is the possibility that the Government will decide to order no new advance strike reconnaissance aircraft at all. [Interruption.] It would seem that some hon. Gentlemen opposite would agree with that. No doubt they will press their view on the Prime Minister and I am sure that their views will be taken seriously into account by the Prime Minister as he goes about the world so busily maintaining our independent nuclear deterrent. Thus, one


possibility is not to order an aircraft at all, as a result, no doubt, of changing our operational requirements.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his Government advocated not only a tremendous increase in expenditure on Polaris submarines—and that at that time we were told that that would save money on the Air Force—but that now he appears to be saying that the view of the Opposition is that we should spend large sums of money on an increased number of bombing aircraft as well as the Polaris deterrent? How far is this to go?

Mr. Carr: I thought it was the Government who were thinking in those terms, rather than the Opposition. We would rather see the money being spent on British aircraft than on further burdening our balance of payments by ordering foreign aircraft on these enormous scales.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Why any?

Mr. Carr: The hon. Gentleman must ask his right hon. Friends, "Why any?" Our answer is quite clear. It has always been our view, even though the burden may be great, that an adequate defence of this country is the first priority for any Government. That is clearly our view, which is probably not shared by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) for reasons which I know are deeply held by him.
I have given the first alternative. The second alternative or choice would be to make use of the most advanced version of the existing Buccaneer aircraft. The third possibility for the Government would be to order the French Mirage IV fitted with Spey engines and the appropriate avionics systems, which, one would hope, would be British. The fourth choice would be for the Government to order the American F111—and all along that has seemed the choice for which the Government have so obviously had a preference—and I have already referred to what struck me as a Freudian use of words by the Minister of Defence this afternoon.
Assuming that an aircraft is to be purchased, the choice of the Buccaneer would have obvious advantages for the British aircraft industry which do not need spelling out by me. The choice of the

Spey/Mirage would also have obvious advantages which, perhaps, need a little more exposition. That choice would provide a considerable volume of work for the British industry—engines, avionics and possibly airframe work as well. That choice would certainly be very advantageous in cementing Anglo-French cooperation in the aircraft industry. If the Plowden Report were to say that close co-ordination of the British industry with the European industries should be one of the most important facts in our future policy for our aircraft industry this would certainly be a most weighty factor. Again, the choice of the Spey/Mirage would reduce the burden on our balance of payments compared with a choice of the F111.
Conversely, if the Government decided to choose the F111 there would be a number of more or less opposite disadvantages. First, it would leave a gaping void in the order load of the British industry. Secondly, it would, in our view, strike a serious blow to confidence in Europe in the fruitfulness of co-operation with this country in aircraft, and there are some who would say that that blow to confidence might be so serious as to render the whole policy of Anglo-European aircraft co-operation almost sterile.
Thirdly, the choice of the F111 would obviously add enormously to our balance of payments problems; by how much is one of the matters that I shall probe later. Fourthly, the choice of the Fill might, in the long run, make Britain—and perhaps Europe—dependent on the United States for military aircraft, and perhaps also, in the end, for major civil aircraft as well, because there is not a major aircraft industry in the world that I know of that does not depend for the major part of its work on military orders, and there must be little possibility of the aircraft industry in Europe producing major civil aircraft unless it is also an industry that is getting a reasonable share of military orders. To quote Flight of 9th December, the purchase of the F111 would
At a large cost in dollars both strengthen Britain's competitors and jeopardise her alliances.
I am not saying what the choice should be. That is clearly a responsibility of the Government, and one that only they


can shoulder. It may be that by their foolish and over-hasty cancellation of the TSR2 the Government have put themselves in a position where they must either perhaps do irreparable damage to the British aircraft industry and to the growth of its vital co-operation with Europe or, on the other hand, fail to provide properly for the country's defence requirements. The Government have put themselves on the horns of that dilemma and must shoulder the consequences of their own folly.
But, serious though the other consequences may be, I want to make quite clear our view that the adequate defence of the country must come first, and if the Government decide that that priority unfortunately demands the ordering of the F111, they must satisfy the House and the country about at least the following points. First, they must satisfy us that the merits of the alternatives that I have mentioned—the Buccaneer, the Spey/ Mirage—have been most fully assessed. Here I would say that so serious are the consequences of the decision that the Government should give more details of this assessment than may be usual when discussing military equipment.
Secondly, the Government must give hard estimates of the total cost involved. The Minister of Defence, I think, originally mentioned a figure of the order of £300 million for the number of F111 aircraft he had in mind, but what would be the new figure for the type of the aircraft which we should actually buy, if we buy? We must know what that total cost would be, and we must also have a lot of information about the supporting costs, ancillary equipment, and the like because, on past experience, it seems likely that when we have taken all these things into account the overall cost is perhaps double the initial capital cost of the aircraft.
The House should hear, too, something about the cost effectiveness analysis of this plane compared with the others. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Defence has made a lot about the need for cost effectiveness analysis; let us see some of it displayed in justifying whatever decision the Government may come to.
Thirdly, if they decide on the Fill, the Government must tell the House quite

clearly whether or not the factors in favour of that plane include its nuclear capability. That should be either confirmed or denied without equivocation.
Fourth, the Government should explain why the short take-off and landing characteristics of the Fill are now so necessary in view of the fact that the Royal Air Force has become committed to the use of Phantoms which require long runways in any event.
Fifth, in the light of the Plowden Report, the Government must tell the House what action they would take to make good the damage to the aircraft industry which a decision to order the F111 would involve. In particular, could they mitigate that damage by fitting Spey engines and British equipment to that plane? We should know what the possibilities are in that respect. The Government must, of course, also make clear, if they intend to order the F111, what plans they have for future military orders for the aircraft industry. As I said a few minutes ago, the experience of other countries as well as our own experience has proved that one cannot have a viable aircraft industry able to provide major civil planes unless it gets a fair share of our defence spending. If, unfortunately, this country has to spend these large sums of money on defence equipment we need to be sure that some of it—a fair share—is going towards our own aircraft industry.
Sixth, the Government should make quite clear what they mean to do about the effects of ordering the F111 on the British aircraft industry's co-operation with Europe. In particular, if the F111 is ordered, what will be the future of the Anglo-French variable geometry project? Would there still be full need for this, or not? I ask because this is obviously a key factor in the view that our European partners would take of the Government's decision.
Seventh, the Government, if they order the F111, should state clearly what action they would propose to take to offset the large extra burden which that ordering would place on the British balance of payments. In particular, they must assure the House they would be obtaining the lowest possible price for it; that they have maintained and used a


strong bargaining position. In this respect one cannot help wondering whether in relation to the sums mentioned in this ordering, the keeping of the TSR2 in being and maintaining its jigs and tools might not importantly have increased the Government's bargaining position in these negotiations.
Another way of reducing the burden on our balance of payments is that to which I have already referred—the posibility that the maximum amount of British equipment might be incorporated in the aircraft. The third way we would want to hear about would be what efforts the Government had made—and not only what efforts they had made but what successes they had had—in obtaining reciprocal orders in the United States for British equipment. I am sure that in all quarters the House would want to feel satisfied that the Government had been sufficiently tough in their bargaining for reciprocal orders.
These are just some of the major themes about which the House would demand to know from the Government if they were to decide to order the F111. I want to repeat that I am not advising whether the F111 should or should not be ordered. That is the Government's responsibility, and the defence of the country must be the first priority. But the consequences, let me repeat, of ordering the F111, if that does become necessary in order to satisfy defence priorities, are so great that the House must be assured on at least these major points that I have just been pressing on the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that in a preliminary way he will be able to deal with some of them tonight. I can assure him that we shall be pressing him and his right hon. Friend as the decisions are taken to justify those decisions in detail along the lines which I have indicated.
It is not for us to tell the Government what planes they should buy, but it is for the Opposition to force the Government to weigh all the factors involved and convince the House that they have done so. We have succeeded today in taking the first step in fulfilling this duty. I assure the House that the Opposition will continue to press for information of the kind which I have mentioned in order that the Government may satisfy the House and, through the House, the coun-

try that they have taken a decision which is fully justified and can be seen to be justified.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is a short debate. Many hon. Members want to speak. I hope that they will be fair to each other and share out the time between them.

7.12 p.m.

Mr. Joel Barnett: I will not follow the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) in his argument. He was so busy making party political points that he was discussing the wrong question and giving himself the wrong answers. It seems to me that this is not primarily a question whether we should be buying the F111 or an Anglo-French plane or even the Buccaneer. I believe that we should not extend the option on the F111. I believe that we have enough information now to enable us to make a decision not to buy it.
I accept arguments put forward that if the R.A.F. says unequivocably that the F111 is the best plane technically to carry out our commitments, most hon. Members, including the Minister, would find it very difficult to reject that advice, but I question the commitments. I appreciate that given an east of Suez commitment it would be difficult if not impossible to argue against giving our troops and our Air Force the best modern equipment we can obtain. Given another plane, no matter how good, if it could not have the capabilities of the F111 I suggest that it would be impossible to argue that we should give our Forces second best. It would be a foolish person who would risk the lives of our troops and the R.A.F. by giving them an Anglo-French plane or some other, if the best technical advice tells us that any other plane falls short of the capabilities of the F111.
If technically and financially the decision is marginal then, given those commitments, we must opt for either a British or an Anglo-French plane, but it is the commitment that I question. I fully recognise the need to develop aircraft production jointly with the French. The difficulties in our own home market are too well-known to need repetition, but I


do not believe that the choice is between the F111 and an Anglo-French plane. The real question is whether we want a plane of that kind at all.
I would like a straight answer from the Minister, if we do not have an east of Suez commitment, do we need a plane like the F111? I believe, from the best information that I have been able to obtain, that without such a commitment we do not need a plane of this description. It is equally clear that if we buy either we are committing ourselves to an east of Suez rôle into the 1970s, making impossible, incidentally, the achievement of our target o' reducing our defence expenditure to a level which would give us a sound economy and the rate of growth which will enable us to meet our target of expansion in the social services and the rest.
I conclude, Mr. Speaker, by accepting your request to keep contributions short and by saying that I trust that we will not take up this option to extend our right whether or not to take up the F111. I say that we know now that we do not need to buy it. Our efforts in the aircraft industry and co-operation with the French on aircraft production should not be for a military plane which we do not need but in the many other fields of aircraft production which are open to us. We must reject both planes, because to do otherwise is to commit ourselves into the 1970s to rôles which we cannot sustain.

7.14 p.m.

Mr. Julian Ridsdale: For fear of developing arguments which, Mr. Speaker, if I then have the good fortune to catch your eye, I hope to develop in next week's foreign affairs debate, I will not follow the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett) in his arguments about an east of Suez policy, only to say from my experience that I am convinced that we shall have a rôle to perform for many years in co-operation with our allies east of Suez and that it is in this country's need to fulfil this obligation that I view the ordering of the successor to the Canberra.
I am sure that no one in the House doubts the need for the R.A.F. to have a high performance tactical strike and reconnaissance aircraft. I had hoped that this would be the plane produced by the

British Aircraft Corporation and the English Electric Company in conjunction—the TSR2. This plane was designed to have a range radius of action of 1,500 miles so as to be capable not only of acting in the European sphere but also world-wide. It was able to fly at supersonic speed and have a short take-off anti landing capability and to fly in a conventional rôle for low-level strike and reconnaissance. It was to be a replacement for the Canberra, and by necessity it was planned that this operation should take place well before 1970 and indeed nearer 1966, especially because of the need for the early replacement of that ageing yet excellent plane the Canberra.
I was most anxious when the cancellation was made, because of all the repercussions, which I knew it would have, not only on the British aircraft industry but on the Royal Air Force as well, and the independence of British air power in particular. I took this cancellation as a double challenge, for I knew that it not only put in jeopardy our aircraft industry but the capability of the R.A.F. to carry out operations east of Suez. Without an aircraft of a range and performance similar to the TSR2, such a rôle would be impossible. I say "performance", because I want to stress the requirement for supersonic speeds, bearing in mind that the fighter aircraft of most Powers, whether first class or otherwise, have this capability.
I am sure it was a double tragedy that the TSR2 was not able to fly sooner. What a pity it was that when the Australians were making up their minds whether to buy the F111 or the TSR2 British industry was not able to produce a flying prototype of that most advanced plane. Alas, try hard as we did to sell them that plane, the Australians chose the F111.
Now we are faced with the choice not of the TSR2 against the F111 but of a completely new idea, the Spey/Mirage which at the moment exists on paper only. The Mirage is a high-flying aircraft designed to drop nuclear bombs yet it is claimed that it can be converted from this high-flying rôle to the more demanding conventional rôle of low-level strike and reconnaissance. Would not a considerable amount of work and technical change have to be done for this to be carried out?

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: Does not my hon. Friend remember that precisely the reverse claim was made for the TSR2? It was first introduced as a low-level aircraft. It was then announced that it could do equally well as a high-level one.

Mr. Ridsdale: I am sure that my hon. Friend will be able to develop that point if he catches your eye later, Mr. Speaker. Would it really be in time to give us a replacement for the Canberra before the 1970s? If all the technical equipment that would be required for this plane were to be put into it, from what I have been able to gather the replacement date would be nearer 1972 than 1970. This has to be weighed against the probability of the F111 order being ready in 1968–69. Eight F111s are already flying. I am sure that, with the present uncertainties of the international situation we cannot ask the Defence Staff to take such a risk. We must have the means of deploying air power east of Suez. Let us not hide from the facts. The choice of the Spey/ Mirage would for perhaps a vital period of time make such a deployment impossible.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: May we take it from the hon. Gentleman's remarks about east of Suez that he is repudiating the position adopted by the Opposition Front Bench defence spokesman?

Mr. Ridsdale: The hon. Gentleman will have to read my speeches and put them alongside those of the present Opposion defence spokesman and then make up his mind.
I am anxious to further Anglo-French co-operation, but is it not clear that we should have to spend considerable sums on research and development to adapt this high-flying plane to a new rôle?

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that two British test pilots have been over to France and flown the Atar Mirage at high speeds and at low level and they have reported extremely favourably on its characteristics?

Mr. Ridsdale: I know, but I think that the hon. Gentleman should pay more attention to the kind of equipment that must go into this aircraft and the large amount of research and development that must be carried out on the plane if it is

to be capable of a reconnaissance rôle as well as a strike rôle.
Surely this makes sense only if a considerable number of aircraft are bought. With Australia and the United States already with the F111, such a wider market is not possible. It makes more sense not to go for a compromise stopgap plane such as the Spey/Mirage would be, but rather to save money on research and development, though I have my doubts about how much the likely cost escalation would be. In any case, we should be free to go all out to produce a plane in the next generation of variable geometry aircraft that would be able to compete in the world markets and have every possibility, with good Anglo-French co-operation, of being a world beater. I am sure that this is the right line for Anglo-French co-operation. Let us make a plane which will have a world market rather than the limited market the Spey/ Mirage would be condemned to have from the start. Viewed in this light, the Fill is complementary to and not competitive with Anglo-French co-operation.
Yet are we sure that this will be done? Will the Government give assurances to the effect that it is their intention to go ahead with the variable geometry aircraft? I am sure, too, that we should not forget the difficulties of logisltic support east of Suez. How much easier this is if the Alliance has the same planes rather than many different types. What we have to do is to seek to meet a requirement of the whole Alliance and not solely a European or a national one alone.
However, we must ensure that if we buy the Fill this means co-operation and not moving to a once and for all monopoly from the American aircraft industry. The existence of an Anglo-French product on a variable geometry plane would safeguard this, but more will need to be done for the British aircraft industry. I know that the Plowden Report is coming out soon and this will deal with the problem of the future of our aircraft industry. If production teams and design teams are to be kept together, more orders will be needed. There are vital civil projects that can be competed for in world markets. I shall watch closely to hear what the Government have to say about this.
Above all, let those who have the interests of British air power at heart


realise the necessity of the R.A.F. having the planes capable of carrying out a rôle not only in Europe but in a world-wide capacity as well. My experience, after two years as Under-Secretary of State for Air and at the Ministry of Defence, tells me that this can be done only by the F111 now that the TSR2 has been cancelled.

7.26 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) gave a rather pessimistic forecast of the potentialities of the Spey/ Mirage. I shall revert to his argument in a few moments, but perhaps I can say straight away that I do not share his pessimism. Indeed, it ought to be stated that 40 Mirage IVs are flying today. It is an excellent aircraft, designed not only with a high altitude purpose but with a low altitude potentiality. It is precisely this potentiality which is now being explored and put forward to my right hon. Friend as an alternative to the purchase of the F111.
Let me say at once that I thought that it came rather ill from the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) when he attacked the Labour Government for their record on aviation. Looking over the whole history of post-war aviation, both civil and military, it can be said that never has so much been paid for so little. It is undoubtedly true that millions of £s have been poured into an industry which, using vast amounts of public money, has nevertheless remained unaccountable to the public. The result is that, without responsibility and without accountability, the aircraft industry has absorbed these enormous quantities of public funds but has not yet delivered the goods to the people. Therefore, any criticisms of the Government's policy are inappropriate in the mouths of hon. Members opposite, who in large measure are responsible for the fact that the aircraft industry became fat, flabby and incompetent in the past years.
Having said that, I must add that I have a certain amount of sympathy with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation. The Minister of Housing and Local Government has to build more houses. The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance has to provide more

and higher pensions. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has to supply more food. The job of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation, ever since he took over, seems to me to have been to supply fewer British aircraft. His success and his efficiency have been measured, in some circles, at least, by the rate at which he has shut down projects, closed factories and made aircraft workers available for other work. I think that that undoubtedly has been a proper description of the line which he has been obliged to take.
I have criticised my right hon. Friend's policy in the past. I have been critical of the cutting down of major products like the HS681, the P1154, and even the TSR2. I think that the policy of cutting down British projects and substituting American aircraft, which, in their totality, will amount in cost to about £900 million over the next ten years, will be found to have been a fundamental mistake that we shall only recognise in the next decade.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation made a very telling argument last April in a debate on the TSR2 cancellation, when he said, ominously and terrifyingly, that if the TSR2 were to be continued, every man, woman and child in the country would have to pay £25 as an individual contribution. If he were to add up the cost of all the aircraft he is now proposing to buy or has bought from the United States—the Phantom, the C130 and the F111A—he will find the cost per head may be short of £25 but not very much.
If my right hon. Friend is to use ominous figures of that kind, he should consider whether it is better to pay that much per head to refertilise the British aircraft industry or to use it to fortify the American aircraft industry.

Mr. Anthony Royle: Is it not also true that the cost per head of the American aircraft will be spent in dollars instead of in pounds?

Mr. Edelman: The hon. Gentleman has reinforced the point.
The last time these matters were raised at Question Time one of my hon. Friends spoke about the B.A.C. "lobby". The inference is that as soon as the British aircraft industry is under consideration a


powerful lobby gets to work to put the case for sectional interests. It is customary in this House to declare one's interest in a matter. I am obliged to declare a disinterest in this one. I have no interest in B.A.C. I am merely concerned with the interests of my constituency and, beyond that, with Britain as an aircraft producing country.
I believe that the future of Britain belongs in the air just as in the past it belonged on the oceans. Unless we accept that premise, we shall be arguing in favour of how rapidly and completely we can become a client of the United States in what should be a pacemaking industry not only in aircraft but in technology as a whole.
Although talking, in a sense, in anticipation of what the Plowden Report will say, few of us have not that report in our minds. I want to declare at once—and this follows logically from what I have said—that my belief is that the only way to ensure that public money is properly spent is to nationalise the whole of the British aircraft industry. I do not believe in our taking a minor share in the industry. That policy was roundly rejected by a Labour Party conference some years ago. I do not believe that even a majority shareholding would be adequate. I think that we must take the whole industry into public ownership and relate both its purpose and its expenditure to public policy.
I want to talk specifically—and briefly, Mr. Speaker, in accordance with your injunction—about the F111A. I have a number of questions to put to my right hon. Friend. First, has he deferred an option or has he deferred a commitment? Has he any commitment to the R.A.F. in this matter? Has he entered into any commitment with Mr. McNamara? Is the postponement of the taking up of the option merely an act of political adjustment, or is my right hon. Friend really to give further consideration to potential alternatives? Unless, indeed, he is to consider potential alternatives which some of us will put forward, he is wasting the time of the House. Will he, therefore, allow the arguments we put forward to weigh with him?
This afternoon, when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence

was replying to questions—I regret that he is not here, but I appreciate that he has to be in Paris for the N.A.T.O. Conference—he said something that is directly relevant to this debate and, therefore, I am obliged to refer to it, even in his absence. I asked the Secretary of State whether, when he spoke about the F111A, he was talking about the F111 A Mark I or the F111A Mark II. I suggested that the cost of the Mark II would be rising towards, if not reaching the cost, of the TSR2 earlier this year.
My right hon. Friend, with the courtesy which he reserves for his hon. Friends, replied to me that the latter part of my supplementary question was inaccurate and irrelevant because it was now unlikely that we should need to buy the Mark II ever. He said that the addition of a computer which the Americans are themselves incorporating in their basic F111A will give us the performance we need.
I was interested in what my right hon. Friend said, especially in his description of my own reference to the F111A Mark II, because it seemed to—and does—contradict completely what was said by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation in the debate on 13th April. My right hon. Friend said:
I am now about to talk about the Mark II, but unlike the hon. Member, I like to proceed in a logical direction, from the Mark I to the Mark II.
We need a quantity of Mark Is for training purposes if we decided to exercise the option. About the Mark there is a little uncertainty, but it is limited and it is definable. The difference between the two marks is not one of engine or airframe, but only of avionics."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th April, 1965; Vol. 710, c. 1287.]
If my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary is to accuse me of inaccuracy and irrelevancy, then surely, if the avionics in the F111A Mark I change, it would not be inappropriate to describe the changed aircraft as a Mark II.
Let us look a little further at it. If the "min-min-mod", as is called the computer which goes into the modified aircraft does not reach the original specifications of the Mark, and if the Americans are now to produce a Mark II, it seems that we are not to get the best aircraft but the second-best—an aircraft with a forward scanner but not with a tripartite scanner. In other words,


when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation says that the F111A with this new "min-min-mod" will give us the performance we will need, he is saying that he has downgraded the specification for the F111A. Therefore, in principle, we can now state the premise that, for the purpose of the R.A.F., what is being sought is not the absolute quality of the TSR2 or the F111A Mark II but something which really corresponds with the downgraded specification.
Let us also consider cost. When I said that the Spey/Mirage might cost £1 million less than the revised F111A, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary declined to accept my figure. The figure was provided to me by those directly concerned with the specification of the costing of this aircraft, but naturally I defer to my right hon. Friend's estimates. If he says that the figure is inaccurate I am inclined to accept that—except if one returns to the crucial debate of 13th April we find that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation had a few points to make about the extra cost of avionics. He said that the avionic component in the F111A was an item not yet settled. If it is not yet settled it seems to me that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation will have some difficulty in deciding what is the absolute price of the F111A that he contemplates buying. I want therefore to ask my right hon. Friend whether he is quite satisfied that he now has a firm figure for the F111. Is he satisfied that the costs of the avionics will not escalate, as has been indicated in certain directions, and, as I suggested this afternoon, that the whole thing will not start to creep up towards the cost of the TSR2.
I do not wish to detain the House, but I want to make one or two technical references to the Spey/Mirage. I said at the outset that the Spey/Mirage was an aircraft which had a low level potential. Those who are directly concerned with the manufacture and production of the aircraft say that it could be put into production in mid-1969. They add that the element of British work which would go into the aircraft would be about 50 per cent., which would be a very substantial figure. Even if the order did not come to anything like the £350 million which my right hon. Friend is now contemplating paying for the F111, I estimate

that it would still represent about £100 million worth of work for British industry, for the aircraft industry, the electronics industry and the ancillary industries. Therefore, this seems to be of the most vital importance.
I have said that the Spey/Mirage would be cheaper than the F111. It can be delivered on time. It is an aircraft whose specification can compete with that of the F111. As the Secretary of State for Defence has now said that the test of the aircraft he wants is whether it will adequately satisfy certain requirements rather than be the best possible aircraft which could conceivably be flown, I suggest that he now gives realistic and serious consideration to buying the Spey/Mirage.
It is true that people have dug in their positions. It is certain that the R.A.F. has now decided quite firmly that, having been given what seemed to it to be a commitment for the F111, it will accept nothing less. I think that the Spey/ Mirage is not only a put-together alternative, so to speak, but a realistic alternative which has the backing not only of the industry, but of the airmen and those who have flown in it at presentations and who know that the Mirage as such is a first-class aircraft which could be suitably adapted.
I conclude by saying that Mr. McNamara has already indicated that he regards Mr. Kuss as being the best arms salesman in the world. He has also made it quite clear that he regards nothing less than the world as being an adequate sales area for the United States arms and aircraft industries. They are not in business for philanthropy. They are not offering cheap aircraft merely in order to assist backward countries which cannot afford sophisticated aircraft. They are not trying to sell these aircraft even merely in order to raise the defensive potential of the Free World. They are in business because they are in business—because they are concerned to profit from it. They are in business in the aircraft industry in order to kill the British aircraft industry, and there is no point in being mealy-mouthed about it.
My right hon. Friend is and should be the defender of the British aircraft industry. I think that he has seen a gleam of light towards which he can move in the direction of Anglo-French co-


operation which is a realistic approach. Here we would have two of the most advanced engineering countries in the world co-operating in an industry in which in the past they have been supreme, not only in Europe but in the world. My right hon. Friend should follow this light. He should apply himself once again to the concept of making the Spey/Mirage an aircraft which will be acceptable to the R.A.F. and which will achieve that stimulation of British technology and British aviation for which the whole country is waiting.
In the past the industry has had many blows, but I think that Britain will recover from those blows, because we must have a place in the air. I hope that the Minister and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will turn back from policies which are doing grievous harm to a key and at one time pace-making industry. I hope that the Minister will save the British aircraft industry, because I do not doubt that in future it may be called upon to play its part in saving Britain again.

7.45 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: The debate has already tended to anticipate the debate which we are to have after the publication of the Plowden Report, but I do not intend to go very deeply into that aspect of the matter beyond saying that I am absolutely convinced that the export potential of British aero-engines is colossal. But we cannot hope to sustain that potential, and still less its actuality, unless we have an aircraft industry to sustain it. No one must think for a moment that we can continue to make Rolls-Royce and other aero-engines unless we have an aircraft industry here at home. However, having said that, I do not propose to dilate this evening on the subjects of the size of the industry and the measure of State support and so on which are subjects for another day.
In this debate we are in difficulty, because the Minister who is to answer it is the departmental supplier and the customer is someone else. The customer is the Secretary of State for Defence. I am rather sorry that we have only the supplier interest represented tonight, because the customer is the man whose opinion ought to be binding. The cus-

tomer Minister is the man who knows whether one type of aircraft or another will serve the needs of his defence policy. This is the great difficulty for all of us, but especially those of us in opposition, in deciding what is the right aircraft to have.
As the Minister may remember, over the years I have been associated to some extent with the promotion of the idea of the swing-wing concept for aircraft. Variable geometry is the great future for all types of aircraft, and Britain has played a very important part in promoting it. The tragedy over the years has been the cancellations, perhaps because of shortage of money and inflation and so on—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) will remember very well from when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. No one blames Chancellors of the Exchequer for having to make cuts, although Heaven knows they have the most appalling effect on research and development in an industry so brain intensive as this.
The concept of variable geometry was introduced in this country by Dr. Barnes Wallis and taken up by one or two others. Certain headway was made by us and, then, immediately after the war, the Americans took it up again and had some terrible casualties in their experimental work and so dropped the idea. Dr. Barnes Wallis went on, but he had to drop further research and development in this country. The result was that if the swallow concept was to survive at all it depended on N.A.T.O. co-operation. Dr. Barnes Wallis went over to Langley Field and gave the authorities there everything he had.
The question I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman is whether when, as we were told this afternoon for the first time, prices were agreed before the option was given, to what extent the prices were in any way conditioned by the British contribution to the technology which had been made by Dr. Barnes Wallis when he went over to Langley Field. Although a different company may be involved in the development of it now than was originally the case, I find it extremely hard to believe that the know-how, particularly of the actual wing joint, was not to some extent derived from what was learned in the United States as a result


of Dr. Barnes Wallis going over there. I have not seen Dr. Barnes Wallis for some months, and I have not consulted him about this, because I think that it is the sort of question which, coming from a politician, could embarrass him a great deal, and I have no wish to do that, or to embarrass the British Aircraft Corporation, of which he is still a very distinguished servant.
It would be absolutely outrageous if the Americans, having gained some of the "know-how" from him, made no recognition of this, and if we are going to become customers for the aircraft, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to tell me whether the price is to be in any way conditioned by this. It certainly ought to be, and if it is not I hope that he will reconsider the matter before he decides finally whether the option is acceptable.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr), who opened this debate, and I were associated a year or two ago in preparing a report on how we thought the Government should go about science and technology. The one thing about which we became very firmly convinced was that this country shines in brain-intensive products. We have an immense exportability here. There is a terrific potential. I am quite certain that the British aircraft industry, properly geared and properly supported without unnecessary interruptions by Government action, can compete with anybody in the world.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman). I am quite certain that there are many people in America who would be delighted to see abolition of this industry. This is a sphere in which we were once at the fore. We can be in the forefront again, and while I agree that it may be desirable for us to co-operate with European countries in the development of variable geometry aircraft, I want to say to the right hon. Gentleman, who knows so much about this particular project, that we have to have a better arrangement than that over Concord. If we are going to get international co-operation in the development of swing-wing aircraft, we have to have it not on the basis that it is "Buggin's turn next to do the next job." We need to have it on the basis of, "Here is a project worth doing on a

bi-national basis, a tri-national basis or a multi-national basis." The way to approach this is to say what finance is required, where are the people most capable of producing this aircraft? It does not matter who did the last bit, the important thing is that the best equipped people should be given the permission to do that particular part regardless of the sequence of one nation or another. This is what is bedevilling the development of Concord, and we must not let it happen over the development of variable geometry aircraft.
If the right hon. Gentleman decides that the F111 is the right aircraft, after he has consulted with the Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister for the Royal Air Force—

Mr. Lubbock: And the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: If they all agree, on the best advice that they can get, that this is the right aircraft, I shall not hesitate to say that I think it is. What I want to make quite sure of is that we get it at the price which we ought to pay. I strongly suspect that if we are not very careful we are going to be paying far more for it than we ought to be paying, bearing in mind the contribution we have made to the project.

7.55 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: listening to this debate on the F.111 one would imagine that we were discussing an alternative for 1968–75. The TSR2 has been cancelled, and as I see it, the Fill is a replacement for the Canberra until such time as, in co-operation with the French, we can evolve variable geometry aircraft. I believe that the viability of an aircraft industry in Europe, competitive with the United States, will be achieved through Anglo-French co-operation. I have been a supporter of Anglo-French co-operation in the aircraft industry for many years and I still support it. Nothing has been said here, or written anywhere, to convince me, otherwise.
I am surprised that anyone should complain of the American industry looking upon the world as its market. Any great producer in any great productive system must look upon the world as its market. Perhaps it is one of our weaknesses that we look at our home market


first and export our surplus. I should prefer to trade with the world as our market.
I believe that the future of our aircraft industry depends on very close cooperation with the French aircraft industry. My information may be wrong, and I do not want to be dogmatic, but it seems that Members on both sides have spoken as if there is, in the year 1968–75, an alternative aircraft in the Spey/Mirage which will perform the tactical rôle for which the TSR2 was designed, but for which we are now purchasing the F111. As I understand it, the Spey/Mirage does not exist; there is no such plane. It is a concept not even on the drawing board. The Mirage 4 is a high-flying plane, and to bring it down to 200 to 300 feet above sea level would require avionics of a vastly different type than those at present in that plane. To put the Spey engine into it would need considerable modification of its frame structure, and we might again be involved in a long period of research and development to bring the Mirage up to what is called the Spey/Mirage plane, such as we had over the years when the Canberra was being developed.

Sir Arthur Vere Harvey: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that when the TSR2 was in the development stage the avionics were designed, and I am sure are still being designed, to some extent, to cover a low capability as well as a high capability?

Mr. Bence: That may be so, but the present French Mirage has not a low-level capability. It has only a high-level capability. The continuous quoting of the Spey/Mirage is meaningless because there is no such French plane. The Spey engine has not been put in it and it has not been adapted to it. To adapt this powerful Spey engine to a Mirage airframe, which is a high-level plane, in order to bring it down to about 200 feet above sea level, would require considerable new avionics, needing much modication.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this is the identical engine which has already been developed and actually delivered to McDonnell's for the Phantom? The engine has been developed.

Mr. Bence: The Spey engine has been developed for the Phantom, but the Phantom is not the Mirage, and the Rolls-Royce Company is very busy providing Spey engines for the Phantom. It is very doubtful if, within the next few years, the Rolls-Royce Company could provide Spey engines for the Mirage and the Phantom. Therefore the Spey/Mirage is not a practical alternative at present.
There was a great deal of talk about the F111's cost, and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) mentioned the cost of about £25 per head for the TSR2. He quoted a figure of nearly £25 a head not only for the TSR2 but for the Phantom, the C130 and for the F111. That is for the three aircraft. The comparison is not quite the same because there is only one aircraft in one case, but there are three different rôles in the other case. We can take a small number of the F111s out of a production line which is geared, according to my information, to supply an order of 431 to the American Air Force.
That means that over this gap of seven years, this time scale, during which we do not have a replacement of the Canberra, we can buy each unit of aircraft, whether it be 10, 15 or 20, out of a production line of 431. The research and development cost which we shall have to pay for the aircraft which we buy is very small indeed.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: If America is to have 431 of these planes, and since, presumably, we should attack the same enemy, why do we want any more?

Mr. Bence: I can understand my hon. Friend's point of view. But my point of view is that this country cannot contract out of the world in which we live. If the rest of the world arms itself, and if we maintain an Army, Navy and Air Force, then our men serving in those forces should have the finest equipment possible, and it is the duty of the Secretary of State for Defence to put that equipment into their hands. I do not care from where he gets it. Many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House wish that we lived in a world in which none of these things was necessary. But we do not.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is my hon. Friend in favour of the independent nuclear deterrent?

Mr. Bence: I am afraid that if I am not careful I shall be led into debating matters which it is not permissible to discuss. But I am in favour of N.A.T.O., of Western European defence and of the A.N.F. under N.A.T.O. control. It is not necessary, in the defence of Western Europe, for Britain to have a purely independent rôle.
I notice that in one of their articles Members opposite who support the Air League have stated that they would organise "a ruthless lobby of M.P.s". This is an important industry, and I agree that many other industries like the motor industry have benefited from the technological fall-out from it. But I am not prepared, and never would be, with all the lobbying in the world, to give patronage to an industry for the sake of the interests within it, whether it is through leagues of this kind, if in so doing taxpayers' money was used in a way which was not best both for the defence of this country and for our economy. It would be intolerable for the Government to patronise technological research and development just for the sake of maintaining an industry, the contribution from which has been diminishing, in view of the public money put into it, even compared with the French aircraft industry. The French people get more out of their aircraft industry than we get out of our aircraft industry.
It would be far better for those who lobby on behalf of the British aircraft industry to lobby for closer co-operation between the British and French aircraft industries. This would be of greater service to Europe than to belly-ache against the sales methods of the United States. Of course American salesmen are ruthless. Of course they are out to sell products all over the world. I wish to goodness that the British and French, in co-operation in the aircraft industry, were as vigorous as the Americans.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: My only interest in this matter is the same as that of the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), and that is to see that we do not become a client state of the United States but that, on the

contrary, we remain in the forefront of aviation technology. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) is mistaken if he believes that the French will be willing to continue co-operating with us on the other projects which we have started with them, such as the variable geometry aircraft, if at this stage we decide to put ourselves in the pockets of the United States by ordering the F111.
For that reason, I am delighted at the announcement by the Secretary of State for Defence this afternoon that we have secured an extension of two months on the option for the F111A, although, like another hon. Member, I should like to be assured that this is not merely a political deferment to cover up the fact that we have already made a commitment to Mr. McNamara and the Air Force to buy the F111A and that as a matter of convenience the House will be allowed some opportunity of seeing the Plowden Report before this final decision is taken.
I do not think that the Minister has gone far enough in asking Mr. McNamara for an extension of this option. It should have been extended by another month if the House is to have a chance of considering the Defence Review before that final decision is taken. The Secretary of State for Defence said this afternoon that the Defence Review would not be published separately but would be incorporated in the Defence White Paper, which is published at the end of February. This year, the White Paper was published on 22nd February, and the debate on it took place on 3rd and 4th March. Therefore, although the two-month reprieve is better than nothing, it is by no means satisfactory and we shall ask for a further month so that the House has an opportunity to discuss the defence White Paper before the decision is taken.
What we shall need to do is to study the operational task given to the Air Force and to see whether it might be satisfied by the Spey-engined Mirage. I do not think that we should have that opportunity if the Defence White Paper appears on 22nd February and the option has to be taken up by 1st March.
I come to the speeches of the hon. Members for Dunbartonshire, East and Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) on the question of the Spey/Mirage. I should perhaps have


liked to refer to them as the hon. Members for Fort Worth in view of the way in which they were pushing the F111. I do not think that they are properly informed about this matter. The hon. Member for Harwich said that there was no possibility of the Spey/Mirage being delivered before 1972. I know that he has knowledge and experience from having been at the Air Ministry in the former Government, but it is my belief that people at the Air Ministry have been brain-washed by the air marshals and have not listened carefully enough to what the industry has to say on this subject. The best of my information is that the British Aircraft Corporation could deliver production models of the Spey-engined Mirage by 1969.

Mr. Ridsdale: Would the hon. Gentleman present reasons for what he is saying?

Mr. Lubbock: Yes. I have told the hon. Gentleman that the British Aircraft Corporation claims that it could deliver production versions of the Spey-engined Mirage by 1969, and I believe it. I do not think that it would make a statement of that kind unless it was prepared to substantiate it and to give the Government guarantees that if an order were placed it could produce the production aircraft at that date.

Mr. Ridsdale: Would the hon. Gentleman say whether the advanced electronic equipment such as would be in the F111 would be in that kind of plane?

Mr. Lubbock: Yes, of course I would. It depends what the Government require. If they require the three-way radar which will be installed in the F111, that could be installed in the Spey/Mirage within the same time scale. It will take time to develop that three-way radar and it has not yet been done in the United States, but they are convinced that they could incorporate it in the Mirage in the same time scale as the Americans could incorporate it in the F111.
The other thing which the hon. Gentleman said about the Spey/Mirage was that it was unsuitable in the low-level rôle. I pointed out in an intervention that two British test pilots had been over to France, they had flown the existing Atar engine version at high speeds and very

low levels, and they reported extremely favourably not only on its low-level capabilities but on all aspects of the aircraft. I can inform the hon. Gentleman also that the French intend to convert all their aircraft ultimately to the low-level rôle and that nothing fundamental needs to be done to it. The strength and fatigue aspects of the matter are entirely satisfactory. Thus, it is not such a difficult matter as the hon. Gentleman seems to suppose, even though the Mirage was, as he said, originally designed for a high-level rôle.
It is of the greatest importance that the Royal Air Force should have the aircraft which will perform the operational tasks required and that it should have them at the right time, but I disagree with hon. Members who say that the Spey/Mirage does not meet those requirements. It must be pointed out also that, when necessary, the Royal Air Force can change its mind amazingly quickly. Until last April, VTOL performance was said to be absolutely necessary for the Hunter replacement but now, apparently, the Royal Air Force is quite happy with the Phantom which needs 2,500 yards of concrete. It would be quite ridiculous if the airfield performance of the F111 were now to be used as one of the major arguments for preferring it to the Spey/Mirage. According to my information, the airfield performance of the Spey/Mirage is the only respect in which it does not meet the requirements of OR343 to which the TSR2 was originally designed.
Moreover, one cannot ignore costs in this matter so completely as the hon. Members for Dunbartonshire, East and for Harwich seem to do. No doubt, the TSR2 would have been a much better aircraft than the F111 if we had carried on with it, but I came to the conclusion reluctantly that the Government were right to cancel it on the ground of cost. But can we afford the F111 either, when the Government are already committed to containing the total defence budget to within £2,000 million at constant 1965 prices between now and 1969–70 and, even more important, we are committed to keeping the direct overseas expenditure component of defence down to below £262 million? I fail to see how this can possibly be done if we are now to spend £350 million on an American aircraft. In addition to the opinions of the various


Ministers who, the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) said, ought to be consulted, I should like to know the Chancellor of the Exchequer's opinion on the matter.
We do now know the exact price of the F111. I am surprised that the Secretary of State for Defence says that he has a firm figure when the avionics have not yet been produced and we do not know how much the new computer he mentioned today will cost. But it would be fair to say that the probable cost of the F111 will be in the region of 2·5 million to £3 million, whereas the Spey/Mirage will be in the region of £2 million.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Probably £1½ million.

Mr. Lubbock: The hon. Gentleman says £1½ million, but I am taking the most pessimistic assumption on which to base the argument. At the very least, there is a difference of £½ million between the two aircraft and probably as much as £1 million each. Therefore, on a programme of 100 aircraft, we are talking about a difference of at least £50 million and perhaps £100 million over the period of a few years. If the Minister does not agree with my figures, he is in duty bound to give his own so that the House may judge between the two, and he ought also to say exactly what the implications of the choice will be for our balance of payments. How much of the Speyengined Mirage would be produced in this country and what would be the saving in foreign exchange over its period of production?
It seemed to me, as I listened to the Secretary of State today, that he had already made up his mind to have the American aircraft. Every answer he gave to questions after his statement showed a naked prejudice against the Spey/ Mirage, in particular, his extraordinary remark that there is no means of discovering what the Spey/Mirage would look like or what its cost or performance would be. In our opinion on this bench, British military aircraft procurement is already weighted quite heavily enough in favour of the United States, and ordering the F111 would destroy the British aircraft industry's capacity to meet future military requirements. It would, as I said, impose a heavy burden on our balance of payments and directly contradict the

Government's policy as set out in the National Plan. Finally, it would indicate to our friends in Europe that, after all, we are not interested in creating together with them a counter-weight to American technological imperialism.

8.16 p.m.

Sir Geoffrey de Freitas: I shall confine myself to trying to answer the question, What aircraft should be given to the Royal Air Force in 1968 when the Canberra ceases to be operational? I have to do this on the information which I now have. To this extent, I agree with the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) in his reference to the two months' delay, because I should find it much easier to discuss this if I had the further information which I would hope to have within a slightly longer time.
I do not at all agree with the hon. Member for Orpington when he says that he finds rather strange the motives of the air marshals in preferring the F111. They are not in any way prejudiced in favour of American aircraft. They are British using the best judgment they can, and they must have come to the conclusion, having regard to timing and availability, that the F111 was the answer. I do not believe that there can be any other motives.

Sir A. V. Harvey: In giving the views of the air marshals on this aircraft——

Sir G. de Freitas: I am not giving them.

Sir A. V. Harvey: No, but in answering the point made, does the hon. Gentleman take into account the wish of the air marshals to try to get air ascendancy over their Navy counterparts?

Sir G. de Freitas: There may be something in that, but I was dealing only with the straight question of the aircraft to replace the Canberra.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) made some comments about the Air League and quoted from a pamphlet. I am a member of the council of the Air League, and, although I disagree with the Air League on this issue, I must say that my hon. Friend was not justified in making the comment he did. The members of the


Air League are sincere men and women working to support British aviation in all its aspects.
I come now to the main problem. The TSR2 has gone but the Royal Air Force requirement remains. In my view, the country's future lies with Europe, especially with France, which is our neighbour. I have done and want to do everything I can to help the British aircraft industry, but the more I look at this question on the information which I have today the more do I believe that, if I had to decide now, I should choose the F111. I now put to my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Government some of the questions which I have assembled out of those which have been raised, and I hope that they will answer them to help me to make up my mind.
Is it not a fact that the F111 exists and the R.A.F. could have it in 1968 when the Canberra is phased out? Is it not a fact that the Spey/Mirage does not exist and that to produce it is not an easy task because it involves almost the creation of a new aircraft, that is, converting a high-level nuclear aircraft into a low-level conventional one? Is it right—this is what I am told—that the Spey/Mirage could not fly before 1970 and that it would then be only the strengthened aircraft itself, the essential navigational attack system to go in it having to come along much later? If this is so, it is closely relevant to the most important point at issue: that because of availability we should have the F111 and not the Spey/Mirage.
As to performance, the variable geometry point has been raised in this debate, and I well remember that when I was sitting on the opposition Front Bench seven or eight years ago the question was raised by the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) and by me and we mentioned at that time that it was being neglected. And is it not a fact that today, because the F111 has variable geometry characteristics, it has really some—it has at least one, I think some—points which make it superior even to the TSR2—for instance, in range on certain types of operations? The TSR2 has gone. It was too expensive. It has gone, and, of course, it is not as though we now have to compare

it with the F111. We have now to compare the F111 with the Spey/Mirage. Surely it has advantages.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: The air marshals—were they not in favour of the TSR2?

Sir G. de Freitas: I do not know. But I do know that the TSR2 is dead and buried, and now the Government have to face the tremendous problem of making a choice of what aircraft will replace the Canberras when they become virtually useless in about 1968–69.
Surely, I ask my right hon. Friend, there is, is there not, the great advantage for the F111 to have this remarkable take-off and landing capability. Whatever the pattern of the Air Force, whatever types of aircraft it has, surely that is important. Is it not a fact that when the F111 was designed the designers were asked to develop an aircraft which had the capability of landing and taking off on the type of strip which the Dakota could use, and, if that is so, is that not a great advantage?
On the cost, I am, quite frankly, puzzled and would like some information. The Air League leaflet says that the Anglo-French machine would be about £1 million cheaper than the F111. I am baffled by this, because surely, if we are mass producing an aircraft such as the F111—and I think the figure is nearly 1,400 in the long run, compared with the 400 quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East—the research and development costs alone are spread over an enormous number whereas I do not think that any one would suggest for a moment that more than one-tenth of that number would be produced of the Spey/Mirage, and the research and development costs would be very much higher.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that the basic development costs of the Mirage 4 are largely written off over the French air force order, and the additional ones are only for the stretched version to take the Spey engine?

Sir G. de Freitas: I am afraid the hon. Member is the victim of a fallacy. The Mirage, as it flies now, has nothing to do with it. The name is almost the only thing which is the same about it.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Nonsense.

Sir G. de Freitas: I should like to hear an answer to that. It is all very well to say "nonsense". These are things which are canvassed in the aviation Press. I want this information from the Government.
I want information about the costing, because I do not understand it. I am not saying this is all one way. I want information, and some sort of discussion of this. And there is another point, that the built-in guaranteed liability in the F111 would keep down running costs? However, I want more information. I am worried too, as everybody else is worried, that this is dollar expenditure.
If the Government give the Royal Air Force what it wants, that is, the F111, then we must be very careful that we do not slow down on the other important Anglo-French schemes and Anglo-French developments on variable geometry. I think it is not only politically essential that we should press on with this. It is politically essential, and we have been neglecting it for very many years, but let us remember that the work in this remarkable field of variable geometry is, after all, on our own British invention.
So reluctantly, on the information I have now, it seems to me that the F111 is the aircraft, and I believe that the Government, on military grounds and financial grounds, will have to choose it. I am very sorry that we have made very many mistakes over the last 10 years.

8.26 p.m.

Mr. Julian Amery: This discussion of ours must inevitably be in the nature of a reconnaissance. We have not got the Plowden Report; we have not got the Defence White Paper; and so we are to some extent discussing how to meet a requirement without quite knowing what are the circumstances in which the requirements will be needed.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) said that the TSR2 was dead and buried. I suppose that that is the starting point of our discussion. I am bound to say that the more we look at the history of the cancellation of the TSR2 the more doubt there must be even in the minds of

those who supported its cancellation. It was an aircraft which, as far as it had flown, had proved itself and on which the test pilots gave the best possible opinions. It conformed not only to the requirements of the Royal Air Force but it gave valuable work to the industry associated both with military projects and with peaceful projects like the Concord.
The Government have taken credit for the fact that the cancellation has saved, they claim, some £300 million. It looks now as if the mounting costs of any possible alternative are going to whittle down this saving to some extent. What is more important is, I think, that the Government have never allowed for the fact that a very high proportion of the money spent, or which would have been spent, on the TSR2 would have been recovered by the Treasury in direct or indirect taxation. I know that the Treasury do not like this kind of estimating very much. Indeed, in Army and Air Force Estimates I was never able in my time to convince them that the Army or the Air Force should not be taxed on the petrol they consumed. But the truth is that some 40 per cent. of the wage bill of the TSR2 would have come back to the Government; and when the final reckoning is made I doubt very much whether any net financial saving will outweigh the additional burden on the balance of payments which will arise from its cancellation.
But, there it is; we are faced, as a result of the cancellation, with what is inevitably a choice of evils. I am bound to say that I find it difficult to follow hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on both sides in advocating one aircraft more than another. I do not personally feel I have the information to do this, but, as this debate is in some sense a reconnaissance operation, there are a number of questions which I should like to put to the Minister, and I think his answers on these may help us in the bigger discussions which lie ahead when the House resumes and decisions have to be taken after the Recess.
I suppose that the cheapest way of solving the problem would be to bring forward as far as possible the Anglo-French swing-wing projects and to make do in the interval with whatever mix we can devise of Canberras, V-bombers modified for the low-level rôle, and


Buccaneers. I would not myself dare to advocate this unless the Air Staff themselves proposed it, and even then I think that Ministers would have to look very carefully at whether it would be wise to take such a risk. But as between the two main contenders there are a number of points on which I think we need information.
First, there is the F111 which is under development. As I understood the Minister of Defence in his statement today, we are no longer even considering the F111 Mach 2. We are limiting ourselves to considering the F111 in its simpler form, with the min-min-mod computer—is that the right phrase?—added to it. It was not quite clear to me from the right hon. Gentleman's reply during his statement how far this really meets the original OR343. He said "substantial", which was a rather vague term. We ought to know more about it. Does it enable both the pinpointing of targets and low-level flying to the same extent as the avionics that we have proposed for the TSR2, or is some downgrading of the operational requirement involved?
If we go to the F111, is there any work at all for British industry in it? My impression is that there is not, but I should like to be quite sure about it.
There seem to be very great disadvantages in taking yet another American aircraft into the Royal Air Force. We have substituted the Phantom for the P1154 which, in its way, was the most advanced aircraft in our programme. We have taken the C130 for the HS681. It is now proposed to take a third American aircraft—at least, it sounded very much as if that was the inclination of the Secretary of State for Defence.
This is a very serious matter, both in reality and psychologically. It will be difficult to convince our friends on the Continent of Europe that we really mean business when we talk about European co-operation if we equip the Air Force on the combat side almost entirely with American aircraft. I do not say that we should not do it, but it could be a serious obstacle to European co-operation and one which the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have to take into consideration very carefully.
There is another point on which I think the whole House would welcome some

information. Supposing, in addition to buying the Phantom, we buy the F111, where does the Anglo-French swing-wing aircraft come in? What requirement is it going to meet? How is this affected by the two American purchases? Is it to be a replacement of the Phantom? Is it to be a replacement of the F111? Is it to be a joint replacement for both? Or has it a rôle outside either of them?
Plainly, if we equip ourselves with the Phantom and the F111 at the end of this decade the question arises, are we going to need the Anglo-French swing-wing aircraft before the end of the 1970s? If we do not need it before the end of the 1970s, will we be in phase with the French requirements, which I understand are rather earlier than the end of the 1970s? If we are not in phase, how will the Anglo-French programme work out?
I ask these questions about the F111. I am not saying that we ought not to take it, but they are points on which we need information.
What about the Spey/Mirage? The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence seemed to be saying that his right hon. Friend would tell the House the reasons why we should not buy it. Perhaps he will be able to give us convincing reasons, but there are a few points about it that I should like to ask.
The first was the point touched on by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock). How near could the Spey/ Mirage come to meet the OR343 requirement in range, in payload and in general performance, by which I mean speed at high level and low level? Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us something about that?
It is common knowledge that it could not meet the OR343 requirement in terms of take-off and landing. How far does that matter having regard to the fact that the Air Staff have accepted that their main ground attack aircraft, the Phantom, should be based on long runways? How far can the disadvantage be mitigated by the rocket boosting system for take-off, which I understand was introduced by us in the war and which the French propose to use with the Mirage themselves?
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us something about cost? I know that it is against the general convention to go into cost details, because of questions of contract, but could he tell us how the cost


of the Spey/Mirage would work out in relation to the apparently firm price that the Americans have quoted for the F111? Could he tell us something too about the time scale. I do not mean within months, because I would not trust any estimate of time scale either for the F111 or the Spey/Mirage in terms of a year or 18 months. But is there a very wide margin or not? Can he tell us something about the opinion of his experts—the experts at Farnborough, and the other establishments—on whether there is any real reason why the Spey/Mirage could not do the job? If it could do the job, there would be great advantage in having it. There would be work for British industry, and it would be an immediate step forward in the direction of Anglo-French co-operation.
There may be right hon. and hon. Gentlemen in the House who feel themselves in a position to judge between these two projects. I do not feel able to do that, but I feel that I am in a position to ask these questions. I know that the Air Staff has a strong prejudice in favour of the F111, but I have noticed that the Air League, which contains a high proportion of retired air marshals, and the industry, feel the other way. I do not think that we can judge without more information from the Minister. But I think that it would be helpful if he could give us information and allow the other interested parties freely to comment on it or contest it if necessary so that we can form an opinion for ourselves.
Big issues are at stake here. There is the ability of the Royal Air Force to discharge its commitments; particularly East of Suez, and this to my mind is, and must be, the first consideration. But there is hound up with this the future of the industry, and with that is bound up the future of the European co-operation. I put it this way to the right hon. Gentleman: the choice of the F111 can be justified and accepted only if the Government can demonstrate to our satisfaction, and to that of fair-minded people in industry itself, that the Spey/Mirage would not be able to do the job.

8.37 p.m.

Mr. Robert Howarth: I did not expect to find that I would be in almost total agreement with the right hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery), but on this occasion,

for a change, I endorse almost every word of his speech. As a student of aviation affairs before coming to the House I cannot say—perhaps because I was on this side of the House—that I counted myself as an admirer of the right hon. Gentleman, but this evening he has posed a number of important questions to which I hope we shall get very clear answers.
The debate so far has ranged not just across the Chamber but sideways as well on both sides of the House, and I should like to start by trying to answer a number of points made by my hon. Friends. I begin with my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett), who questioned whether we needed a replacement aircraft at all and said that this really depended on whether we had an east of Suez rôle in world strategy. I wonder whether my hon. Friend has overlooked the fact that, even if we did not have this, in my opinion, strange concept of an east of Suez rôle, we still have vital interests in other parts of the world, not the least of which is here in Western Europe?

Mr. Barnett: Would not my hon. Friend accept that without an east of Suez commitment a plane like the F111 would not be required?

Mr. Howarth: I do not think that I would necessarily accept that. It seems to me that we obviously need a replacement for the Canberra. It has a rôle to play in areas other than east of Suez and we have a duty to provide our Air Force with the best possible aircraft in the shortest possible time. It is against this background that we have to try to make the decision.
I confess that I am as much confused by those in this Chamber who are passionate advocates of the Spey/Mirage as I am by the advocates of the F111. Like the right hon. Member for Preston, North, I do not feel able to give any advice to the Defence Ministry on this point. All I can say is that the right hon. Gentleman posed certain questions and that I hope that in the breathing space we now have we shall receive satisfactory replies. I join with the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) in asking that the deferment of the taking up of the option should be further extended. Since we appear to have the cards in our hands


in terms of an American order, I hope to see the option pushed back for at least one month, as the hon. Member for Orpington desired; indeed, I would like to see it put back even further while the issues are clarified in order that an objective decision or recommendation can be made by the Government, supported by opinion in this Chamber.
When we are considering the alternative either of the F111 or the Spey/ Mirage, can we examine the possibility of a mixed bag? This point was partly developed by the right hon. Member for Preston, North, who spoke of trying to use existing aircraft to tide us over the period until the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft comes along—if it ever does come along in the future.
I would add the following question: is it not possible to make use of a version of the Phantom for some of the rôles which require to be fulfilled in the next few years? If we are to believe the very glossy advertisements of the McDonnell Corporation which appear in various technical journals, this aircraft can do pretty well anything. In my opinion it is a fine aircraft. As a keen supporter of the British aircraft industry, I am sure that we are not doing our case any good by denying that the Phantom is a fine aircraft and is undoubtedly versatile. If it is eventually fitted with the Spey engine it will be an outstanding aircraft.
Is it not possible for the Phantom to be further developed so as to fulfil some of the requirements of the OR343? I do not know—but that is the sort of question to which we should have an answer. I hope that in the next two or three months the Government will have time to give us this sort of information. In this respect I support the impressive list of questions posed by the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) at the end of his speech. I made a note of them. They are very comprehensive and ask for the sort of information to which the House is entitled. As a loyal supporter of the Government, I hope that they will be able to see their way to answering these questions, along with the Defence Review, in the next few months.
If we decide to order the F111, what will be the effect on the British aircraft

industry? I am neither advocating it nor denying that it should be ordered; I do not feel competent to do so. But it is necessary to point out that if we take up this major order with the American aircraft industry the effect will be severe not only on the military but the civil sides of British aviation. I want to couple what I have just said with a little note about a fact that I was going to save up for my peroration: the great majority of politicians and the general public do not appreciate the fact that the civil air transport industry is one of the major growth industries in the world—representing about 10 per cent. or 12 per cent. per annum—which will have to be satisfied as the years go by for as many years as one can foresee. We are only scratching at the surface in air transport, and if the British aircraft industry provides the right type of aircraft, with a world-wide appeal, there is no reason why we should not have a reasonable share of this future market. Therefore, I hope that it will be appreciated that, if the British aircraft industry does not have the very important backing of military contracts—which has been the basis, to date at least, of the success which we have notched up in civil aircraft—we shall be in very deep water.
I should like to quote a paragraph about the effects on Anglo-French cooperation if we were to order the American aircraft. The French have a a magazine equivalent to our Flight International called Air and Cosmos, which is quite a responsible magazine. In this week's issue is a short paragraph on the subject of a TSR2 replacement, which confirms what has already been said in the debate but is more important because it comes from the French side of the Channel.
The issue dated 11th December says:
The decision which the British Government is about to take on the replacement of the TSR2 is followed with the greatest attention in France. If, after the selection of the "Phantom" fighter and the "Hercules" transport, preference is given again to another American design, consequences on some of the future projects covered by the Franco-British cooperation agreements seem unavoidable. The European industry as a whole would suffer from another decision for the U.S. industry. France may have to go on its own for the next generation of advanced fighter aircraft which will be better adapted than U.S. designs to fit European requirements.


I hope that this consideration will weigh very heavily in the decision which the Ministry of Defence will be taking.
I should like to answer two of the points made in the debate, though I see that the hon. Gentlemen who put them forward are not here at the moment. When advocating the Spey/Mirage, the hon. Member for Orpington dismissed lightly, I thought, the difficulty of converting the Mirage to a low-level rôle. I think that his point was that the Mirage is satisfactory in a low-level rôle. As an ex-employee in the aviation industry, I must express some astonishment at this claim. I suppose it could be true, but I should be surprised if an aircraft designed for a high-level rôle were also satisfactory without major redesign for a low-level rôle. I hope that this is so, but I should be very surprised if it were.
The other point on which I wanted to comment is the interesting one made by the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), when speaking about variable geometry. He paid tribute to the work of Barnes Wallis, and said that this would undoubtedly be an important feature of aviation in the next decade. He is probably right, as far as one can see, over certain high-performance aircraft. Yet I must admit that I view with concern the decision to build a supersonic civil airliner, the Concord, with a fixed-wing, when the Americans will presumably—I do not think the decision has yet been finalised—order the Boeing supersonic transport project which is, of course, a swing-wing, a variable geometry, project. One wonders if, with the Concord, we are not falling into the same trap as we did over the Comet 15 years ago. That is another matter, I admit, but I wanted to make those two comments on speeches already made.
I hope that all the questions put by the right hon. Member for Mitcham will be answered and that there will, for once, be a relaxation of the very tight security restrictions which are usually clamped on details of military aircraft. I hope that it will be recognised that the consequences of a wrong decision in this case would be so serious to the nation and to the aviation industry that they demand special consideration of these questions. I hope that we receive answers to all of them over the next two or three months.

8.50 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: I will endeavour to compress my remarks very much, because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) wishes to take part in the debate, and I may therefore jump one or two points. It has been evident since the Government took office that they have claimed to take performance as a criterion. Unfortunately, their view on performance has changed often overnight, whenever they have thought it necessary for them to justify the purchase of particular aircraft. I suspect that performance will be pleaded in support of the decision to order the F111 instead of the Spey/Mirage merely—because it is convenient to do so and for no other reason. But performance covers many aspects. It covers take off, ferrying, payload capacity and many other aspects. The Minister should inform the House what the performance considerations are.
One performance consideration—and this is obvious—is serviceability. If an aircraft cannot fly, the question of what its performance is does not even arise. When we look at the record of some American companies involved here, in sheer performance the record is not very impressive. The last major civil flop was produced by the same company as is producing the F111. The Convair 990 was unable to meet its performance guarantees, and it cost the manufacturers an immense sum of mony. There was a very long delay indeed before it was able to meet its performance guarantees. This is scarcely an encouragement in respect of an aircraft which is today being talked about as if it had already met its performance guarantees. In fact, it has not met those guarantees; it is still in a very early development stage. Let us not speak of the F111 as if this aircraft had finished its development satisfactorily, and as if it were in fact in service, when it has neither finished its development satisfactorily nor is it in service. Let us bear that in mind.
The Minister speaks of the Spey/Mirage as if it were merely a gleam in somebody's eye. The Mirage IV is very far from that. It is an aircraft which has come off the production lines and is in Service with the French Air Force. The engines proposed for it have already been delivered to the McDonnell Company—at least, one has—absolutely on time and


was above the guaranteed performance for the Phantom.
What is necessary in the modification sense for the Spey/Mirage IV is to lengthen the fuselage to take the Spey engines, because the centre of gravity is altered. Incidentally, this gives the aircraft a greater range because the lengthened fuselage can be used to carry more fuel. The structural modifications required are by no means extensive. To speak of this aircraft as if, because it is designed for a high-level mission, it is unsuitable for a low-level mission, shows lack of information about the design parameters. When Marcel-Dassault set about designing the aircraft they were asked to stress it for low-level use, too. If the Minister's information on the subject is inadequate, then he owes it both to the House and to the Government to inform himself on the matter.
Turning to the question of cost, the Secretary of State for Defence said this afternoon that he had got the guarantees about spares prices. He said in a rather indefinite manner that we were to pay the same price as was paid by the American Air Force. This can mean a number of things. Does it mean, as it meant for the Germans when they bought the F.104, that it is guaranteed for two years and then the sky is the limit? Does it mean that we should pay the invoiced price which the United States Air Force would face, but not the final price which they would pay after re-negotiation, because their contracts have re-negotiation clauses in them. Will the Minister tell us what is being offered? Is it the re-negotiated price? For how many years is this guaranteed? Is it guaranteed for as many years as we want spares?
We must remember, too, the very great economies that come from having a common engine in more than one type of aeroplane. If there is a common engine in both the Phantom and the Mirage IV it will be obvious to the Minister that the capital cost involved in spares must be immensely reduced. The same applies to overhaul facilities, with the number of man hours and personnel required. The overhaul and maintenance of common engines is greatly reduced in cost, remembering that the engineering staff is some of the most scarce personnel in the R.A.F.
When the question of the Phantom came up I asked the First Secretary of State what plans he had made for increasing our exports sufficiently to generate the dollars to pay for this aircraft. Back came the ridiculous reply that since trade was multilateral, the question did not arise. If we were to contract to pay 700 million dollars or more without demonstrating the means of getting them, the net result would be yet another run on the £—and the Minister as an ex-economist who has not yet become an aircraft engineer, should remember that fact before he finally changes from one profession to the other.
The sort of decisions we are debating have, by their nature, a quality of irreversibility, not only from the point of view of the aircraft to which we become committed, but from the point of view of the resulting aircraft industry left in this country. I am convinced that if we are to have a British aircraft industry continuing, our domestic market and export market outside Europe is too unreliable, if not too small, to support it. Therefore, we need access to a European market if we believe that it is necessary for us to have an aircraft industry, and I do so believe.
Let us embark at the earliest opportunity on a joint venture of this kind, remembering that it would be far less technically speculative than the F111 and that there are no academically new features in the Spey/Mirage. I hope that the F111 will prove extremely satisfactory because it is part of the armament of the Western world. However, I would certainly not like to find myself supporting a Government who had to find so many dollars to pay for it. Nor would I like to be responsible for finding myself supporting a Government who must deal with an atrophied aircraft industry resulting from such a decision.
I have every hope that, certainly within the next year—and probably within the next six months—it will be my party which will be in a position to take the responsibility for this matter. I hope that when that time comes we will not be faced with irreversible decisions taken by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite.

8.58 p.m.

Mr. E. S. Bishop: It is difficult to avoid repetition towards the end


of a debate such as this, in which a considerable number of hon. Members have taken part. However, a number of points need to be underlined and I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that we were delighted this afternoon when my right hon. Friend was able to announce the deferment of consideration of the option which we understood for the last nine months had to be made by the end of this year. This will enable my right hon. Friend and the Government to look at this matter in the 'broader context of the Plowden Report and the Defence Review.
We recognise the difficulty which faces any Minister in having to bear in mind that whatever may be the need for an aircraft, that need cannot be satisfied for a period of less than, say, eight years —from the time of specification, through the designing taking place, the aircraft being proved, production commencing and the necessary experience of the Forces in using it. Accepting this great restriction on his freedom, the Minister must anticipate the needs of defence for possibly five or 10 years ahead, the time it may take before an aircraft can become reality. That is the situation which faces the Government today. We have the added difficulty of trying to talk of aircraft in the context of defence, and of defence in the light of our foreign policy.
We recognise that the Defence Review has taken some months of consideration, and we cannot discuss aviation and defence without knowing what our future foreign policy may be. Several references have been made to our possible rôles east of Suez, and one might well ask whether we can afford to carry the economic burdens of present-day defence, or whether they should be shared. These questions are relevant, because if we share our responsibilities with other Powers we may be able to ask ourselves whether we need replace the Canberra at all, as we were expected to do with the TSR2.
That brings me to a question which should be underlined tonight—whether Operational Requirements 343 are now really up to date. We recognise that the TSR2 had a very high specification—long-range, high level and low level, tactical, striking, reconnaissance, variable geometry, supersonic, long or short take-

off. These are stringent specifications for any one to meet, and it might be said that only the F111 would satisfy the rôle. At the same time, if the question is asked in the light of a changing foreign policy which may come from the Defence Review—and we hope for substantial changes in that direction—one can ask whether such an aircraft is required at all.
A changing specification may, of course, bring into the rôle of the alternative some of the aircraft that have been mentioned tonight—the Spey/Mirage, the Spey/Buccaneer, and possibly other alternatives which many of us hope will be considered in preference to buying the American F111. Whether the problem be of specification, policy, cost, or time of delivery, many will agree that we have to ensure that the R.A.F.—and our Forces generally—gets the best possible aircraft suitable to its needs at the time required, regardless of almost all other considerations.
Will the Minister assure us, therefore, that the OR343 is still necessary? As some hon. Members have already mentioned, it will be rather ironic if we have to buy the F111, because it was Dr. Barnes Wallis who, frustrated by the policies of the party opposite in years gone by, went to America to give the Americans the lead in this direction. We have to pay the cost today——

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: It is only fair to say that this point should not be presented in such a way as to imply that Dr. Wallis went under his own steam, as an entirely spontaneous exercise. The Government of that day encouraged him to go.

Mr. Bishop: Be that as it may, Dr. Barnes Wallis went to America several years ago and was instrumental in the introduction of V.G. there, and we have lost out as a result. I hope that we shall not recriminate on these things, but will make our own aircraft industry so attractive that we can bring back not only Dr. Barnes Wallis but many others who have gone, since they can make their contribution to our own aircraft industry.
The Spey/Mirage has been mentioned by many hon. Members as the alternative to the F111, but this plane is at present non-existent. The Mirage IV


exists and the Spey exists, but the two have not yet been married. Those who are familiar with the industry will appreciate that when we want to put a new engine into an existing aircraft, even though both may have been proved separately, there remain quite formidable problems of design, engine mounting, aero-dynamics, stressing, and many other features which take time. It may well be that the Spey/Mirage will not be ready until the 'seventies, when we would want to replace the Canberra, which has now been in use since the early 'fifties. That, of course, may be overtaken by the Anglo-French V.G. aircraft which possibly will be available in 1975. Therefore, the Government's dilemma is to assess our needs in the 1970s and decide what aircraft is best available technically to meet those needs.

Mr. James Johnson: My hon. Friend is contemplating an adjustment or association of the planes. Would he think in terms of a Spey/Buccaneer as opposed to a Spey/ Mirage? Is not that possible?

Mr. Bishop: I have already mentioned that the Spey/Buccaneer is an alternative but the same applies to both cases. There is still a great deal of work to be done in adjusting the design of these engines to the particular aircraft and in the testing and proving. This is a factor which we cannot ignore, and time is important in the replacement of the Canberra.
We must appreciate that there may be a need for less stringent specification and it may well be that the Spey/Buccaneer or Spey/Phantom will fit the rôle. In any event, we hope that the Government will do everything possible to ensure that there is a British or British-French alternative to the F111. I have already mentioned, and I think that many would agree, that in the matter of needs we have to be sure that the Forces get the plane they want at the time when they want it. In the light of those needs one could say that other matters are not so important. At the same time, if we come to review the operational requirements specification and say that we do not need the stringent specifications of the TSR2 or the F111, these alternatives become possibilities.
We have to bear in mind also the effect on our own industry. We recognise

that in the past we have had an industry which has been leading the world in its design skill and in the aircraft which it produced. I believe that that time can come once again, but if we are to satisfy the needs of the near future with American aircraft we can never catch up in the race to provide British aircraft satisfactory to our needs. We may have a situation in which we buy the F111 to satisfy our immediate demands, and the aircraft which we would regard as an alternative may be stopped once again, and then when we need a replacement later on we shall have only American aircraft available and the British market will be unable to satisfy our demands.
If there are no alternatives at the moment to the F111 we might take a small number of the option to satisfy our immediate needs while at the same time we could be pressing ahead quite vigorously in co-operation with the French aircraft industry to produce a real alternative. If the Minister is going to say that the technical requirements of our aircraft is all that matters, we can point to the debate earlier this year when obviously budgetary considerations were involved, with the possibility of the R. & D. cost of the TSR2 rising from £90 million to a total spending of £750 million when the TSR2 became available. The Government said that they were unable to meet that immense cost and they therefore justified the cancellation of the TSR2 on budgetary considerations.
Several hon. Members have mentioned tonight and on previous occasions the effect on our dollar resources. We cannot ignore this. At this time it is important that we should do all we can not only to cut down dollar spending but in our own industry so build up our resources and equipment that we shall be able to satisfy our own requirements and export abroad.
The Minister said this afternoon that the price of the F111 has already been fixed and also the cost of the spares. This will to some extent allay the fears which may be held here that, having cancelled the TSR2 and committed ourselves possibly to the F111, costs may rise in consequence. The Minister must still satisfy the House that, although the cost may be fixed for the F111A, if we have to accept any variation or modifications later on—if we have to take another


mark—we have the same protection as he assures us we have at present, and this would affect not only the initial cost of the aircraft but also the cost of the spares.
Another factor which must be considered in taking this decision is that we shall be possibly tied to a foreign supplier. We have already had some information about the way in which some electrical or electronics components have been held up by America, which means that the whole of an aircraft system may be in jeopardy. These are some of the dangers which we face when we are tied to a foreign supplier.
Hon. Members mentioned also the possible danger of jeopardising Anglo-French relations. We are pleased that the Concord is under way. We are also pleased that the Minister was able to announce a few months ago the V.G. project which is going ahead with the French. We are anxious that these shall continue and that we should add to the number of projects. I believe that very grave harm could be done to the British aircraft industry if we were to decide in the circumstances to buy aircraft from America. There are many other points which can be made in the light of past experience.
I end by asking some of the questions which I believe have been asked by other hon. Members tonight. I ask whether OR343 is still relevant to our needs or whether we can accept a lower specification, in which case there is the possibility of getting an alternative to the F111. We ought also to consider the alternatives of the Mirage and the Buccanneer with Spey engines. If the Minister is going to America for our immediate needs, pending, substantial work with the British industry for a longer term alternative, we might consider reciprocal sales with America on the condition that, if we buy their aircraft or projects, we ought to be able to export to them some of our own aircraft projects and therefore help our own industry.
Whatever decision is taken will not be taken lightly. It has to be taken in the light of all the circumstances of foreign policy and of defence needs. Finally, I hope that in the consideration of all these matters the future of the British aircraft industry will be uppermost in the Government's mind.

9.13 p.m.

Sir Arthur Vere Harvey: I very much agree with what the hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) has just said. The hon. Gentleman was right to ask what the Americans will buy from Britain. It is a little late to try to find what the Americans will buy from Britain when orders have already been placed. That matter should be dealt with in the first place when trading takes place. Some horse-trading should be engaged in. What we have read so far in the Press is that the Americans may buy some small ships. There has been a certain amount in the papers about it. No doubt there will be great lobbying against this proposal. I have seen the figure mentioned of £24 million worth of ships. This seems very little to set against British orders which may well amount to £400 million.
The hon. Gentleman was right to refer to the cost in dollars. We know that the Government have borrowed about £1,000 million in dollars from the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere to support the £. At the moment the £ is strong. It is strong only because we are living on borrowed money. The ultimate fate of the £ depends on whether we run our affairs properly. We all hope that it will work out the right way. As I see it, about £250 million worth of orders have already been placed for the Hercules transport and the Phantom. Assuming another £150 million spent on the F.111A, that brings us to a total of £400 million.
How on earth are the British people to pay all this money back to the United States? Like other hon. Members, I want to see British Service men have the best equipment, but I do not want to see the nation bankrupt in the process. Probably we have to make do and give up something else in order to ensure that our Service men get the best available. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer or some one else from the Treasury must say something to the House about this.
The decision to delay this matter for two months is ironical considering that the Government have had a year to think about it. The Defence Secretary said that he was negotiating this ten days before the Motion was put down on the Order Paper. But it does not need a


Motion on the Order Paper to acquaint a Minister with the fact that hon. Members are unhappy. Interviews take place and there is lobbying, and if the Whips and the Parliamentary private secretaries are doing their job they tell the Minister. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has been pressurised into this situation, and I am glad of it. I am delighted by his statement, but I do not think that two months is long enough.
Whatever they may say now, the Government made a ghastly mistake in cancelling the TRS2. I would be the first to agree that, starting from scratch now, we would not be building a TSR2, but surely, once we had spent so much money and once three prototypes had broken the sound barrier and we had an aircraft comparable to the F111A, it would have been worth proceeding with. But not only did the Government cancel the project. Other hon. Members and I had an interview with the Minister of Aviation about the prototypes continuing to fly. But he "scrubbed" them. He said that it would be too costly at £2 million. But what is £2 million in £400 million?
Not only did the right hon. Gentleman cancel the three prototypes. He also gave instructions that bulldozers should go over the jigs and tools and destroy them so that there should never be the opportunity of building the TSR2 even should it be necessary. The right hon. Gentleman has great responsibility to the country in this matter. It was bad enough to cancel the TSR2, but he decided to wreck the project completely. We might have fallen out with the Americans in the course of the year and have needed those jigs and tools.
I was never satisfied or happy about this matter, but I agree that the military considerations must be of primary importance. I think that the F111A will obviously be made to work. The Americans have had problems with it but any country that can put men into space for 14 days at a time can get an aircraft to work. I have no doubt that they will do what they have said they will do. But the cost will be £3 million apiece, according to my estimate.
We must be prepared to continue our forward element east of Suez. The hon.

Member of Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett) recommended that nothing should be bought. That would be a nice way of sending the Prime Minister to America—asking him to say that we should not have a rôle east of Suez and break all our treaties with Malaysia and other countries. I estimate that at the moment 40 or 50 aircraft will be needed in what I refer to as reinforcement squadrons.
There has been obviously a conflict in Whitehall on this matter. There has been a local war between the Royal Navy and the R.A.F. It seems that so far the air marshals are winning and that they are not prepared to see new carriers coming into being with Phantoms hotted up with British engines. They are intending to obtain R.A.F. supremacy in the air—and I do not blame them for trying, but we as Parliamentarians have to think of other things, of what is to be done and how we are to spend public money.
There is no doubt that the Australians placed an order for the F111A about 18 months ago because the Labour Party here when in Opposition indicated that it would not support the TSR2. The Australians thought that if they ordered the TSR2 they might not get it in the end. So they ordered the F111A instead. That was a great service that the party opposite did to British exports before the last election.

Mr. Howarth: We have heard this allegation before. Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman care to indicate whether the Australians themselves have ever said this or whether it is theory?

Sir A. V. Harvey: All the indications are that the Australians did say that they were not convinced that they would get the TSR2. Indeed, the same thing is being said in Australia about British civilian aircraft—that if they order British they will not get the aircraft because there will not be a British aircraft industry. It is common knowledge that that is the case with the BAC111 and the VC10.
Let the Minister of Aviation realise that the Americans, as I have said many times, are out to kill not only the British aircraft industry but the European aircraft industry. Mr. Kuss, the super-salesman, was over here last week, and I could see what was in the wind then.


He was here to clue up this order. I am delighted that he has gone back empty handed for Christmas. That was the best news for this country for a very long time. I ask hon. Members not to underrate the seriousness of the Americans in this whole business. They are determined to kill the aircraft industry and the electronics industry, not only in Britain but in Western Europe, for they want to dominate the world market. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aviation has been struggling hard to sell British aircraft in the Middle East and elsewhere, and he knows only too well the tactics of our American friends. He could tell a very illuminating story of their tactics if he were allowed to do so. The hon. Gentleman has done a great service to British aviation trying to sell our equipment against the most formidable odds.
The British aircraft industry has to be maintained, but if the order for the F111 is placed, what will happen to the industry? Where will the orders come from? There might be orders for a few Buccaneers and some Coastal Command Comets, but little else. Where would the design work be? An aircraft industry cannot be maintained without design work, but the design teams will emigrate. The Labour Party used to attack us about the brain-drain of scientists going to America. It is still going on. Some 300 doctors have left Britain since April and aircraft designers will be leaving Britain in large numbers unless something is done. They are already doing so. They must be encouraged to be with it on the latest design ideas. If the order for the F111 goes to America, we shall have had it.
I am not in a position to advise or even give an opinion on what is the best aircraft, but, provided that the Mirage IV can measure up to 95 per cent. of what is required in the specification, it should be seriously considered for a joint project between Britain and France. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Aviation, who is a very good European, had the most unpleasant task last year of going to France to try to cancel the Concord. I cannot imagine a more unpleasant task. We all know the story—the Government could not get out of it—and the project is continuing, and continuing very well indeed.
What will be the impression in France if we go American this time, if, having tried to get out of the Concord a year ago, we refuse to co-operate, assuming that the Mirage IV can do the job? It is no good having Members saying that it would have to be completely redesigned. That is not so. It was built with a low level capability, and I remind hon. Members that even the Victor bomber has a low level capability, even though it was designed eight or nine years ago. It is still doing a very useful job. The Mirage IV would not have to be redesigned. I believe that delivery could be made by 1969. If the British Aircraft Corporation gives a date, I am prepared to accept it, for as a rule the Corporation is on time. It was certainly eight or nine months late with the TSR2, but that was not bad considering the complexity of the project. The Americans are late with the F111 and it is by no means certain that they will be on time and, with the escalation of the war in the Far East, the Americans will want quite a few of these aircraft themselves before the British get them, and, as we know, the Australian orders would come first anyway.
Since last December, when the Prime Minister went to the United States, I have had the feeling that he made some sort of deal with the President that, in return for support of the £, we would place orders for aircraft in the United States. I have yet to be convinced that something like that did not take place. Hon. Members may dissent, but all the evidence points that way. I should like to have a categorical assurance that there is no arrangement with the Americans, because I am becoming extremely alarmed about what the right hon. Gentleman will do.
I ask the right hon. Gentleman to be absolutely frank with the House in the next two or three months. The Government have a desperately important decision to make and, if the right hon. Gentleman does not tell us the facts, we shall read them in the American aeronautical magazines. The news is usually there. The House is entitled to know. We need another month, not two but three months, so that the matter can be gone into fully and so that we can consider it with the Defence White Paper, the Plowden Report and other reports and


not rush into a decision. The Government must have doubts, otherwise they would not ask for postponement after nearly a year of negotiation. I would ask them to bear in mind that if this order is placed in America the British aircraft industry can be written off today. I admit that the take-off needed for the Mirage is longer than that of the TSR2, but the Phantom has been accepted for long take-offs. If it is acceptable for the Phantom, then I think it will be acceptable for the Mirage IV. If it is not, then tens of thousands of British men will be out of work.
It is no good saying that the skilled engineers will go into export industries. It does not happen like that. A man will get a job where his house is, because he cannot get a mortgage for a house elsewhere under this Government. He has to live where he is. These men will not go into other export trades. We want to maintain them in the aircraft industry, where there is this tremendous technological fall-out into general engineering. The Government will bear an increased responsibility if they decide against this joint co-operation with the French.

9.26 p.m.

The Minister of Aviation (Mr. Roy Jenkins): The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) began the debate a little curiously by saying that it was almost an unnecessary debate. I would not go as far as that by any means. We have had some extremely interesting speeches and some extremely interesting cross-currents developing from both sides of the House. What I do say is that I think that this is a rather oddly-timed debate. The option has been extended to 1st March and I hope that we will not hear any more from the right hon. Gentleman about that being due to pressure from the Motion which was put down last week. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence communicated with Mr. McNamara on this matter as long ago as 2nd December, long before the Motion was put down, and unless the right hon. Gentleman is going to say that he does not believe my right hon. Friend he cannot tic this up with his Motion.

Mr. R. Carr: Of course I was not suggesting that I do not believe the Secretary of State for Defence. The right hon. Gentleman knows quite well that pressure was develop-

ing very strongly long before the Motion was put down. That was only the culmination of pressure from both sides of the House.

Mr. Jenkins: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that at the beginning of his speech he specifically referred to this as a great victory for his Motion. I am glad to see that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), who is always a great cheerer, if nothing else, is prepared to put himself behind that proposition.
This is an oddly-timed debate from another point of view, because the House will have the opportunity fairly soon of having a much wider and better-informed debate, when it has the recommendations of the Plowden Committee before it. It will be possible to debate that before a final decision is made, and one wonders why this debate took place. I am rather inclined to think that it was perhaps an opportunity for some aviation warriors on the other side of the House to have a last fling before they have to face up to some of the hard facts contained in that Report.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Perhaps, if the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence had made this statement last week we would not have wanted the debate today.

Mr. Jenkins: I must say that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) certainly trotted out some of the old arguments, as indeed did the right hon. Gentleman for Mitcham. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Robert Howarth) mentioned the fact that the right hon. Gentleman raised a number of substantial points which it would have been extremely appropriate to answer if we were announcing and defending a decision to buy a particular plane. It would not be appropriate to put forward answers which would be based on a decision having been taken in advance of that having been done. There is no question of a decision being taken. Let me say to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) that there is no question, in his phrase, of having deferred a commitment. We have deferred an option. The decision is open. We have not taken the decision and we shall take it bearing in mind all the facts.
I would also say to him that I do not think it is very appropriate this evening, such a short time before the Plowden Report comes out, to attempt to debate the whole future of the British aircraft industry. But I was a little surprised when he began his speech, very powerfully, by saying that this was a fat and flabby industry but, at the same time, underlined the fact that he has, I believe, opposed, in a friendly way, every attempt that I have made to put it on a more wholesome diet during the past few months.
Perhaps I can help the House by outlining some of the considerations which should be in our minds in deciding upon a Canberra replacement, which is what we have to decide upon within the course of the next two months. The three considerations which, it seems to me, are central to this decision are, first, to give the R.A.F. the best plane for the rôles which it has to fulfil at the time that it is needed; secondly, to do so at the least possible cost to the nation, taking into account both budgetary and balance of payments considerations; and, thirdly, to do so in the way that offers the British aircraft industry the best prospect for the future, and this, in my view—I agree fully with my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) here—means the best prospect for Anglo-French co-operation and for wider European cooperation built upon that foundation.
If all these three considerations pointed in the same direction, the decision would be extremely easy. But the fact of the matter is that they do not all point in the same direction, or certainly do not point with equal force in the same direction. They point in a considerable variety of directions. But there is one direction in which, in my view, they certainly do not point, and that is—I say this to the hon. Member for Macclesfield—back towards the TSR2.
I do not know what the right hon. Member for Mitcham meant by saying that we were over hasty in this decision. Does he or his right hon. Friend the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), who believes in economy, think that we should go on spending at least £350 million because, unlike the right hon. Member for Monmouth, we were unable to make up our minds about anything? There is no ques-

tion of it being an over-hasty decision. It is quite clear that this aircraft would have been the enemy not only of economy in defence spending but also of effective Anglo-French collaboration.

Mr. J. Amery: Could the right hon. Gentleman confirm one point? I said this evening that when the right hon. Gentleman claimed a saving of £300 million by cancelling TSR2 he had not taken account of the return to the Exchequer from taxation arising from the salaries and wages of those working on the project. Could he confirm whether this is right or not?

Mr. Jenkins: What I will say to the right hon. Gentleman, to a great part of whose speech, which I thought was very thoughtful, I listened with interest, is that that point is entirely without foundation. It is one of the most bogus economic points that I have ever heard. It assumes that labour and capital resources not used on TSR2 would be left totally unemployed. If this were so, we could always take the view that it was right for the Government to spend twice as much money on one thing as on anything else because half of it would always come back in taxation.
The point which I was making was that the TSR2 was the enemy not only of budgetary economy, but of French collaboration. I think that everybody, except the Opposition, is convinced now about budgetary economy. However, we fulfil our needs, the saving will be at least £300 million and may well be £400 million or above. The higher figure will apply only if we make do with fewer aircraft. But this does not make it an unfair point. So long as we had the TSR2 in the programme there was an incentive to keep up the numbers. Only an order of 100-plus gave the programme even a vestige of financial sense. With R and D costs of £300 million, a substantially smaller buy would have sent the total costs per plane rocketing towards the fantastic figure of £10 million each. With the TSR2 knot cut—and it ought to have been done long before—we can buy the very minimum number of planes which we need, certainly with the F111 and, to a large extent, with the alternatives, which I shall discuss later, without forcing the R and D cost per plane up to quite intolerable levels.
Now, the second point, the incompatibility of the TSR2 with Anglo-French collaboration. At this point, I put a perfectly serious question to the Opposition, particularly to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West who, I believe comes to these matters with a fresh mind. Today, the Opposition have argued the paramount importance, on industrial grounds, of Anglo-French aircraft collaboration. They need hardly have done so. It is at the centre of my own conviction in these matters. But in previous debates, and to some extent today, they have argued with at least equal force against the cancellation not only of the TSR2 but also of the HS681 and the P1154. These were the three military projects which I inherited. None of them offered the least prospect or basis for collaboration with the French or with anyone else.
This was true of all three, but it was most obviously true, because it was the furthest developed and involved the greatest call on resources over the next few years, of the TSR2. In February this year, when we were poised over the decision whether to cancel or not, I asked the French whether they would consider coming in on the TSR2. If they had shown a flicker of interest, it might have made a substantial difference. But they did not.
Therefore, I ask the Opposition these questions. First, what sort of basis for Anglo-French collaboration in the military field do they think they bequeathed to us? Second, had we followed their advice and gone on with all these three projects, what room do they think there would have been either in terms of budgetary commitments or of R.A.F. inventory for a Anglo-French military collaboration at any stage in the next ten years? We could not have done the Jaguar, and we could not have planned the V.G. strike interceptor, without taking leave of our financial senses. We should have been shackled for the next crucial decade to the disastrous treadmill of independent British production for the inadequate British market. We had to clear the ground before we could even start to build.
I turn now to the present position. How do we try to reconcile as nearly as we

can the three conflicting objectives which I set out at the beginning? Is it by adopting the Spey/Mirage, by developing the Buccaneer, or by a limited purchase of F111s? First, the Spey/Mirage. We have considered this aircraft most seriously and we shall continue to do so, but neither hon. Members here nor commentators outside do anything to help Anglo-French co-operation by pretending that there are no real problems associated with this aircraft. It is, or could be—it does not exist as an aeroplane yet—a good aircraft, but it is idle to pretend that it has the range, the speed, the weapon load or the capacity to operate from unprepared strips which the F.111 has. In addition, with the Spey fitted and with the required nay-attack system developed, it would not, in our view—I wish it were otherwise—be available for service until at least two years, and perhaps longer, after the F111.
These developments would cost money, certainly enough to make the £1·5 million per aircraft which has been quoted totally unrealistic. The aircraft might still be cheaper, a little cheaper copy for copy, than the F111, but as, because of the performance difference, more aircraft would be required to do the same job, it would be a good deal more expensive in terms of cost-effectiveness. Present indications, in short, are that the Spey/ Mirage falls between the Buccaneer and the F111, but in cost it is much nearer to the American aircraft.
Ought we nevertheless to take the Mirage, in spite of what I have said, in order to show our faith in Anglo-French co-operation? Vital though I consider this co-operation to be, I think that this is an unwise argument. The Anglo-French partnership, if it is to work, must be an equal partnership. Its essence is that we should go forward together in good faith and mutual confidence to produce good aeroplanes for the future. This for our part we intend to do, and we attach the greatest possible importance to the variable geometry project, which we are determined to protect; but an equal partnership does not demand that we should take the Mirage unless it meets our requirements, any more than it demanded that the French should be associated with the TSR2 when it did not suit them. We have not taken


a final decision on the Mirage. When we do so we shall announce it to the House.

Mr. J. Amery: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the point about the Mirage, can he tell us about the matter of long and short runways, having regard to the decision of the Air Staff?

Mr. Jenkins: I think that, clearly, on the question of runways, there is an advantage for a plane which can operate from the shorter runways; and the fact that the Phantom may require hard, relatively long runways, is certainly no reason why another plane should not be required to operate from runways as short and as unprepared as possible.
It by no means follows from this that there are not arguments against taking up the F111 option. In my view there are, as indeed there are to some extent against all the possible courses—but a break 0f faith with the French is not, I think, among these arguments.
The most forceful argument, of course, is that the F111 will cost dollars, and, although I think this aircraft will be a good bargain in terms of sterling, a lot of dollars. Could we avoid this expenditure across the exchanges by meeting the need from our own industry? A developed Buccaneer is undoubtedly a serious possibility, and I come now to this.
The Buccaneer Mark 2, which is already in service with the Navy, is an efficient, low-level strike aircraft. It could be given a reconnaissance capability and a new low-level nav-attack system broadly comparable to that proposed for the F111 or the Spey/Mirage. With these developments the Buccaneer —the two double star, as it would then be called—would be a possible Canberra replacement, and one which would avoid dollar expenditure, of course.
But there are a number of cautionary considerations of which the House should be aware in the case of this aircraft also. First, considerable research and development expenditure would be involved. It is the case with any aircraft which one is adapting to a new rôle, and I was surprised at the ease with which some hon. Members who, I believe, have had experience in this difficult and complicated in-

dustry spoke about the way in which we could take an air frame and an engine and fit them together as though it were no trouble at all and involved no risk; and was surprised, too, that hon. Gentlemen seem to think that one could fit an avionics system or an engine into an air frame without risk in cost and time.
In the case of the Buccaneer considerable research and development expenditure would be involved, and when this plane had been developed, at least twice as many Buccaneers as F111s would be required to do the job. Because the eventual cost would be about two to one—the Buccaneer would cost half as much as the F111—there would, therefore, be no saving in sterling costs, but on a cost effectiveness basis the Buccaneer two double star would not be far behind the F111, though it would be a little. However, as a plane it would have certain operational deficiencies. It is a relatively old aircraft. The Mark I came into service in 1961. It is subsonic and, with great respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. James Johnson), who I know pays great regard to these questions, it would not be very easy to make it supersonic. The considerations which applied to the views of hon. Members opposite apply in this case also.
The existing Buccaneer has a Spey engine in it, but some of our discussions of these complicated matters are bedevilled by the fact that the name "Spey" covers a very wide range of engines now produced or to be produced by the Rolls-Royce Company. The Spey which is required in the Phantom or would be required for the Mirage is a very different proposition from the Spey which exists in the Buccaneer currently in service.
As I say, the plane is subsonic, and it would be very difficult to make it supersonic. It has a much shorter range, and also it requires a hard runway.
The third and perhaps the most important of the points with which I am now dealing is that it would he several years later in service than the F111, although it might possibly be a little earlier than the Spey/Mirage. There would not be a great deal between the two planes and, if anything, the Buccaneer might be slightly earlier.
The question of time scale carries with it both operational and industrial disadvantages, the first of which is an obvious one. For the R.A.F. and the country to be dependent on the Canberra in the period between 1969 and 1971 or 1972 might be dangerous. The second disadvantage is the industrial one of bringing a later plane into service. That is a less obvious point but, to my mind, it is none the less an extremely important one which relates to the core of much of our argument this evening.
To develop this plane or for that matter the Spey/Mirage and to bring it into service in the early 1970s might—and I do not say more than "might"—create more of a barrier to art effective R.A.F. demand for the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft than would a slightly earlier purchase of the F111. The variable geometry plane is required by the French in 1974—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery) asked me questions on the point—and on current thinking by us in 1975. That is a perfectly containable and almost a convenient difference. They would take the slightly earlier ones and we would take the slightly later ones. However, were the difference to widen and were it to widen substantially, there could be real difficulties. It is obviously not easy to bring one plane into service in, say 1972 and another, better but roughly comparable plane, only three years later.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield asked where is the design capacity and on what is the design work to be employed. It is to be employed on the variable geometry plane. It is a forward-looking proposition of great importance not only to the future of the British industry but of importance, too, to Anglo-French and wider European co-operation.
If the House attaches central importance to the highly versatile variable geometry plane, the argument about what is the best replacement really becomes a much more difficult and complicated one than some hon. Members at any rate have allowed in their speeches tonight.
Let me put it this way: if we could manage, and manage effectively, with a

Buccaneer which required less lengthy development time than the Two Double Star, the problem would be greatly eased. We cannot tell for the moment, indeed we cannot tell until the Defence Review is somewhat further advanced, exactly whether we need an aircraft of the F111 sort at all, but that in itself is a most powerful argument for keeping open the option for the period described by my right hon. Friend this afternoon. We shall thus have an opportunity, before making a decision, to define more precisely, in the light of the Defence Review, exactly what commitments the R.A.F. will be asked to undertake in the 'seventies.

Mr. Lubbock: Would the right hon. Gentleman deal with the point that I made? Last year the Defence White Paper was published on 22nd February, and if that time scale is adhered to next year only a week will elapse before the right hon. Gentleman has to decide whether to take up the option. Would not it have been wiser to have asked Mr. McNamara for three months instead of two?

Mr. Jenkins: There are limits, from an industrial point of view, as to how far options of this sort can be extended, but the Government will have available to them the full results of the Defence Review, and the House will have available to it, and will have been able to debate, the Plowden Report on the future of the industry.

Sir John Eden: Do I understand that the House will have available to it a decision on the possible purchase of the F111, or some other similar aircraft, before the publication of the next Defence White Paper, or will this be included in the Defence White Paper, and no separate announcement be made to the House on that point?

Mr. Jenkins: I cannot give a firm undertaking on that, but it is certainly the case that the Government will have the Defence Review brought to the position in which it will be contained in the Defence White Paper before a decision is taken. It is also the case—and the House knows that it is to be published this week —that the House will be able to study the Plowden Report and will have the opportunity of debating it soon after we come


back before any decision on this matter is announced to the House. I think that that goes a very long way to meet what has been put to us here.

Mr. Enoch Powell: What the right hon. Gentleman is in effect saying is that the decision on this aircraft will be contained in the Defence White Paper, which will include what is now known as the completion of the major part of the Defence Review.

Mr. Jenkins: That was not the undertaking which I gave to the hon. Member for Bournemouth (Sir J. Eden), and I think the House and the right hon. Gentleman will understand that I do not want to commit my right hon. Friend, who after all has to present the Defence White Paper and announce the decision, too much as to exactly how these are presented. What I have said is that the House will be able to study and debate the Plowden Report. The Government will have available to them the result of the Defence Review up to the stage at which it will be incorporated in the Defence White Paper before making any decision about it. I think that there is no question of it being made in the dark, without the Plowden Report—with everything That it means for the future of the industry—being in the hands of the House, and without the House being able to express a view about it and hearing the Government's policy on its recommendations.
In our decision on a Canberra replacement we shall pay the greatest possible regard to industrial considerations, both in relation to our own firms and to the prospects for Anglo-French collaboration, but let us not entirely forget that at the end of the day the object of ordering a Canberra replacement, or indeed any other military aircraft, is not to serve industrial convenience, but to provide aircraft for the Royal Air Force.
The demands of the Royal Air Force need, as we would expect, to be scrutinised critically and stringently, but, when we have done that scrutiny, we must ensure that it has the equipment to perform the tasks which are put on it. We are determined to achieve this, to give it

the equipment it needs in the way most compatible with a healthy but realistic future for the British aircraft industry closely linked with its European neighbours.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: Can the right hon. Gentleman answer the specific question that I put? We were told this afternoon, for the first time, that the price had actually been agreed over this option for the F111 before the option was finally given. May I ask again what I asked in my speech, namely, in deciding that price was any account whatsoever taken of the contribution of British technology that was made by Dr. Barnes Wallis in the field of variable geometry?

Mr. Jenkins: If the hon. Member thinks that in the position in which, under the Government of the party opposite—[Interruption.] Under the Government of the party opposite Dr. Barnes Wallis, as he told us later, was positively encouraged to go to America and take his views there. They were developed there and neglected here, and I cannot think that anyone would agree that it would be possible to argue that because of this we should have a lower price for the aircraft than the American Air Force themselves.

Mrs. Harriet Slater (Lord Commissioner of the Treasury): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — KENYA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (GIFT)

Resolution reported,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will give directions that there be presented, on behalf of this House, a bookcase containing Parliamentary and Constitutional reference books, to the House of Representatives of Kenya, and assuring Her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same.

Resolution agreed to.

Address to be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

Orders of the Day — BROADCASTING OF PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Select Committee appointed to inquire into the matter of Broadcasting of Proceedings in the House of Commons:

Mr. Brian Batsford, Mr. Paul Bryan, Mr. Tom Driberg, Mr. Maurice Edelman, Mr. Michael English, Mr. Bernard Floud, Mr. David Gibson-Watt, Mr. Eldon Griffiths, Mr. Percy Holman, Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine, and Mr. Peter Shore.

Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Publications and Debates Report in the last Session of Parliament and the Memoranda laid before the Committee relating to the Broadcasting of Proceedings in the House of Commons referred to the Committee:

Power to send for persons, papers and records:

Power to report from time to time:

Three to be the Quorum.—[Mrs. Harriet Slater.]

Orders of the Day — HOLIDAY TRAVEL TRADE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mrs. Harriet Slater.]

9.57 p.m.

Mr. Edward Milne: Almost as soon as the Christmas cards have been cleared from our letter boxes the travel brochures enticing us to go on all sorts of holidays in faraway places in the sunshine will be arriving. It is therefore a useful point in time to remind the travelling public of the warning of the Consumer Council about the promises made by many of the travel firms. The Council pointed out that an elegant brochure with pretty coloured pictures is no measure of a firm's efficiency.
For that and many other reasons which I intend to mention during this debate, no more appropriate time could be chosen for a discussion on the question of the future of the travel trade in Britain. We are dealing not only with the holiday enjoyment of innumberable people but with one of our main growth industries. No fewer than 4½ million people holidayed abroad last year, spending about £250 million in the process. By 1970 it is estimated that about £484 million will be spent on holidays abroad. When we remember the firms handling this trade, and which have been responsible in recent years for the growth of this industry, we realise the tremendous chances that have been taking place and are still taking place. We have watched the John Bloom washing machines disappear, along with English and Overseas Tours Ltd., which handled the holidays offered to purchasers of these commodities. Canned food firms have offered prizes in competitions, the Provident Clothing Company has sent round about 11,000 door-to-door tally salesmen offering holidays on the "never-never". Tea and detergent and other firms have offered holidays to the public——

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mrs. Harriet Slater.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. When Mr. Speaker is standing, the hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Milne) should sit down.

Question again proposed.

Mr. Milne: My apologies, Mr. Speaker. I was getting engrossed in my subject and failed to notice the movement of the clock.
As I was saying, about 11,000 door to door tally salesmen on behalf of the Provident Clothing Company are offering holidays to the public on the "never-never" In the course of this fantastic trade and the tremendous increase in the trade, there have, of course, been major and minor disasters. The case of Four-ways, the Fiesta crash, Omar Khayyam and the others are all gloomy landmarks in the history of the industry's progress.
We are now seeing further bids to break into the United Kingdom travel market by one of Britain's top four mail order companies. Also, in recent weeks, there have been efforts by the Travel Trade Association to set up a joint travel trade consultative committee and to appoint an ombudsman to deal with complaints from holidaymakers. All of this is an indication of present trends. Also in recent weeks, we have seen "Operation Stabiliser", as it has been rather clumsily termed by the Association of British Travel Agents, which has as its foundation a merger between the Association of British Travel Agents and the Travel Trade Association.
I would call the attention of the Minister of State to the Guardian's comments on 30th October about this stabilising of the travel trade:
By clever manoeuvring, the Association of British Travel Agents has made it virtually impossible for honest travel agents and tour operators to remain outside the organisation. Its claim that the A.B.T.A. agent is the reliable agent must now become a reality.
As the biggest and most powerful association (689 members with 1,452 offices) the A.B.T.A. itself must bear some of the responsibility for the unhappy reputation that the British travel trade has acquired in the past few years.
It is not surprising, therefore, that they should have taken the lead in the question of the future of the travel trade industry.
The Times, two days earlier, in an editorial headed "Holidays without

Tears", said this of the stabiliser project:
It now seems likely that the two largest associations of travel agents will he amalgamated. If this comes off, it should remove the last argument from the critics of the travel agency business that want to see it regulated by law. Credit must go to the Association of British Travel Agents for making the offer to the Travel Trade Association, and also for devising new safeguards for the public against the possibility of losing their holiday and money or being stranded abroad. When the Travel Trade Association hold their conference next month the forces urging them to accept the offer will he powerful, and it is to be hoped they will be successful".
Operation Stabiliser has now passed into history. At an extraordinary general meeting of A.B.T.A. it was passed by 178 votes to 36. I hope that the Minister of State will take note of the number of member firms of this organisation and see that the figure in the voting for this Stabiliser Operation represents only a minority of the members of the Association of British Travel Agents. The claim made by its chairman, I feel, is a justifiable claim—that tour operators will market their holidays abroad only through A.B.T.A. retail agents and that, arising from this, no one booking a holiday through A.B.T.A. will be stranded abroad.
But what one must remember when dealing with the future of this trade is that the foundations for the success of this experiment were based on the necessary merger between the two travel trade organisations.

Mr. H. Hynd: Which has not taken place.

Mr. Milne: It has not taken place. I was about to show that. Indeed the negotiations in this matter have broken down and we have not had the Stabiliser which was promised.
This brings me to the kernel of this Adjournment debate. I want to turn for a moment to two main points. I believe that we are facing a situation in which, in order to protect holiday makers in this country, Board of Trade and Government action is now needed. I refer the Minister of State to his replies to two of my Questions on past occasions on this matter. On Wednesday, 17th February, 1965, in a Question to the


Board of Trade, I asked the President of the Board of Trade
… what steps he will take to protect those who take holiday tours abroad against default by travel agencies".
The Minister of State replied:
I am considering whether it is practicable, without restricting legitimate enterprise by new or small firms or materially increasing costs to the travelling public, to devise legislation which would give protection to tourists against the risk of financial default by tour organisers who provide inclusive holidays abroad."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 237.]
As recently as 9th December, 1965, I again put a Question to the President of the Board of Trade:
If he will further examine the need for legislation to protect holidaymakers, in view of the breakdown in negotiations for an amalgamation between the Association of British Travel Agents and the Travel Trade Association.
The Answer which I received was:
My right hon. Friend keeps the need for such legislation constantly under review; but, before reaching a decision, he wishes to see how the holidaymakers and the travel trade are affected by the Association of British Travel Agents' 'Stabiliser' scheme"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1965; Vol. 721, c. 148.]
We can see from recent developments in negotiations between the various members of the trade, and from the different types of trading activities in which the travel trade has indulged, that this trade is very much in the melting pot. As I have pointed out, a trade which is expanding in the way in which the travel trade is expanding needs examination by this House—examination of the methods to be followed in its future operations, because it is almost three years ago that what is now the British Travel Association and what was then the British Travel and Holidays Association said that it did not feel that any statutory control over the travel trade was necessary at that stage. But the Association said that
'if and when such action is considered necessary the Association feels that the machinery of control as proposed in the Bill would be on the right lines.
The Association also felt
… that the trade association concerned should be given the opportunity to take action to strengthen its position in maintaining and improving standards of service and should consider such changes in its regulations which would make it possible for all reputable agencies to join the association if they wish.

It went on to deal with some of the points which have been mentioned tonight; the protection of holidaymakers, safeguards which should be given and the necessity to ensure that the promises made in brochures and contracts are kept.
Although I will not go into great detail on this matter tonight, hon. Members will agree that we are painfully aware that many firms which operate in the trade have departed from the best standards set by the leading firms. In view of the extensive ramifications of the trade and the fact that we have seen enormous changes taking place in the last few years —even in the last three or four years; with people taking their holidays on the "never-never" and so on—it is important that the best standards of the trade are maintained. In this connection, even detergent and tea firms are offering holidays when selling their respective commodities. The best standards must be maintained for the 5 million to 6 million people who will go abroad for their holidays next season.

10.13 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Roy Mason): I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Milne) for raising this subject tonight, particularly since he has done so under the wide heading of the future of the travel trade. That gives me considerable scope to speak broadly about the industry, which I will do at the outset.
I was pleased that my hon. Friend mentioned the British Travel Association which, in its modern form, goes back to only 1950, when it was entrusted by the President of the Board of Trade with the comprehensive mandate which still guides and fashions its current activities. It is the Government's chosen instrument for the purpose of promoting travel to and within the United Kingdom.
Its principal objects are, first, to increase the numbers of visitors from overseas to the United Kingdom; secondly, to foster and develop among residents of the United Kingdom the practice of spending holidays in the United Kingdom; thirdly, to stimulate the demand for goods and services, and to promote international understanding through travel; and, fourthly, to assist in every


way the improvement to the tourist and holiday accommodation, catering, transport, entertainment and other amenities in the United Kingdom.
For all that has been achieved in the sphere of tourism over the years, the British Travel Association, its successive presidents and chairmen, the members of its Board and its various committees, and by no means least its expert and industrious executive staff, deserve a great share of the credit. Nor must we overlook the complementary and valuable work, with somewhat different and more limited objectives, which has been done through the years by the Scottish Tourist Board, the Wales Tourist and Holidays Association and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.
Nor can I pass over in silence the efforts of the London Tourist Board, with its special responsibility for Britain's most powerful of all magnets for visitors from overseas; the great and historic metropolis of London. The London Tourist Board came into existence only three years ago, but already it has done a great deal, not least in building up London as an attractive and convenient centre for international conventions and conferences.
Recently—and I think this is specially commendable—the British Travel Association have taken the initiative in giving impetus and guidance to regional developments in the promotion of tourism. In October 1964, the Yorkshire Travel Association emerged, followed in October this year by the South West Travel Association—the latter covering Britain's most popular holiday region which currently attracts about one in every five of our holidaymakers. A third regional association is on the point of maturing in the North East, and studies and discussions are proceeding with a view to the establishment of a fourth association in the North West.
I am convinced that, in order that Britain may effectively meet intensifying competition for shares in an expanding international market for tourism, we in the Board of Trade and the British Travel Association, as the organisation which carries out Government policy in this sphere, must put increasing emphasis on the development side of tourism. The decisions whether or not to proceed with individual development projects must, of

course, depend in the main on what expectations of profitability are entertained by private interests or individual local authorities. But the Government have the responsibility of creating the appropriate climate, and the British Travel Association is the Government's instrument for encouraging all those concerned to proceed energetically with the development of facilities which experience has shown to be sound, and not to be unduly cautious before embarking on promising experiments.
Tourism is big business, and business which, unless I am mistaken, is going to increase substantially during the next few years. Indeed, in the two decades which have passed since the end of the last war, tourism has progressed from negligible proportions to become one of the most important economic sectors in the country.
In 1964, Britain received about 2½ million visitors from outside the British Isles, or 3 million if visitors from the Irish Republic are included. These visitors spent nearly £200 million whilst they were actually inside our country; that is to say, the figure excludes fare payments which in many cases, of course, were made to British air or sea carriers. Perhaps a decade or so from now we an look forward, a little optimistically, perhaps, but by no means unrealistically, to an intake of about 5 million visitors from overseas.
However, all concerned with tourism, whether here in the House, or in the Board of Trade and other Government Departments, at the British Travel Association or in the various trade organisations and commercial firms comprising the travel industry, must realise that, though the world market for tourism is expanding, and expanding fast as living standards rise in many parts of the world, competition for shares in the market is simultaneously becoming more intense. There is evidence that the revenue from tourism is tending to level off, though the numbers of our visitors continue to increase steadily.
This situation means that none of us, whether in the Government or in the industry, can afford to sit back, and to feel complacent. We must make every effort to attract to our shores increasing numbers of travellers and holidaymakers; and, perhaps more important, we must


also do everything in our power to ensure that these visitors, as well as the growing numbers of our own people who take one holiday or more in their own country, are properly looked after and provided with the best and most comprehensive facilities and amenities possible. Development on these lines is now receiving far more attention.
We live in islands which are, in many areas, crowded and congested. It is essential that, if we want more visitors who will spend more money to the benefit of our economy and our balance of payments, we must ensure that they can reside here in comfort and contentment, and have adequate room to move around without strain or irritation or frustration when they wish to do so. All this requires a determined and concerted effort by all those concerned with the travel and tourist trades.
This year has seen one innovation which holds out some hope of relieving congestion at the peak of the holiday season in late July and early August. For the first time in history——

Mr. H. Hynd: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have an idea that the Minister has brought the wrong speech. He has so far said nothing about the subject raised by my hon. Friend. He is talking about the British Travel Association.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): That is the subject of the debate.

Mr. Mason: The title of the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker is "The future of the travel trade in Britain", or something of that nature. Perhaps I may be allowed to paint a rather broad picture, instead of looking rather narrowly at the seamier side of what may be a very small area of the travel trade. If my hon. Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr.H.Hynd) will exercise a little patience, and not be too impulsive, I will come precisely to some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth.
For the first time in history the date of a Bank Holiday was changed to bring about better staggering of holidays and encourage holiday taking in September. This Bank Holiday experiment will continue and will indeed be extended to

Whitsun during the next three years, after which we shall have to consider what might be done on a more permanent basis.
Next year too—and much more important—all but one of the examining bodies will be completing before July starts the school examinations for the G.C.E. at both O and A levels. This kind of innovation together with the gradual unrolling of the road programme and the building of new hotels and so on, will obviously give us a better basis for looking after our growing intake of visitors.
These reflections lead me to emphasise one point. With greater numbers of the public travelling whether at home or abroad, and including these days not just the wealthy and the privileged but people literally from all walks of life including many who are not very experienced, it becomes the more important for the travel trades to ensure that the services which they sell to the public are fully as good as the public can reasonably expect.
In this connection, I have been noting with particular attention the assurances of the leaders of the Association of British Travel Agents that their "Stabiliser Operation" has been designed with one single aim—the aim of affording a better assurance to any customer of any member firm who buys one of their inclusive tours that he will, when the time comes, get the tour he has paid for.
Recently, and more particularly since the widely publicised accounts of holidaymakers stranded abroad or losing holiday or money or both as a result of financial default on the part of a handful of tour organisers during the summer of 1964, there has been a good deal of pressure for Government legislation to control the activities of travel agents and tour operators. The Government has the greatest sympathy with the victims of the defaults I have mentioned and is greatly concerned that the public should not lose their holidays or the money they have saved for them.
As my hon. Friend mentioned, it will be recalled that I told the House in February this year that I was considering whether it would be practicable, without restricting legitimate enterprise or materially increasing costs to the travelling public, to devise legislation to protect tourists against the risk of financial default by organisers of inclusive tours. However knowing the difficulties


there are to provide protection—for most buyers of inclusive tours—if this problem can be adequately dealt with by action within the trade itself this will be all to the good.
Before attempting to reach a conclusion on the practicability of legislation, therefore, we are now proposing to await some experience of how the travel trade and its structure are in practice being affected by the introduction of the A.B.T.A. "Stabiliser Operation" to which I and my hon. Friend have referred. This will of course be without prejudice to any eventual conclusion of the Government on any restrictive aspect of the scheme and on the question of possible legislation. If, as I have said repeatedly, the scheme shows signs of developing in any direction which seems on balance to be undesirable, we should need to consider intervention. As at present advised, however, we do not feel that we should be justified in urging A.B.T.A. to reconsider its scheme.
Efforts have been made by the two major travel trade bodies. For 1965 the Travel Trade Association took out an insurance to protect clients of its members from loss of holidays through financial default on the part of a tour operator. Limits of liability are £100,000 in the aggregate and £25,000 on any one tour operator. So far as we know, only three T.T.A. members are tour operators on a substantial scale.
The Association of British Travel Agents has been exercising its mind a great deal on this problem. Talk of legislation may have encouraged this. A.B.T.A. has a scheme which really falls into three parts—first, accounting rules; secondly, the common fund; and, thirdly, now upon us, operation stabiliser.
The accounts rules were adopted in October, 1964. They require every member, whether tour organiser or true travel agent, to submit balance sheets in prescribed form to an independent qualified accountant at regular intervals of no more than one year, to open his books to the accountant, and to give him all other necessary information. The accountant reports to the member: and within six months of the balance sheet date the member must present a signed copy of the accountant's report to the A.B.T.A. Council.
The by-law establishing a common fund was adopted in February, 1965. All members are to contribute such sums as may be directed by the Council, subject to a maximum of one-half of the individual member's annual subscription to the Association. The fund, expected to realise £13,000 in the first year, rising to —35,000 in the second, assuming there are no claims on it, is to be used mainly to prevent members of the travelling public from being stranded overseas because of financial default on the part of an A.B.T.A. member. A secondary use, if funds permit, would be for the benefit of tourists who have paid for holidays which had not started before the financial collapse of the member tour organiser responsible for the arrangements.
A.B.T.A. claims that operation stabiliser, which was duly adopted at its Annual Convention held in Jersey late last October, is a necessary complement to the earlier establishment of the common fund. The essence of the arrangement is that for the sale in the United Kingdom of holidays or tours to places outside the British Isles, first, tour operators who are members of A.B.T.A. shall appoint as agents and pay commission only to travel agents who are also members of A.B.T.A. and, secondly, travel agents who are members of A.B.T.A. shall sell tours and holidays as defined above only on behalf of tour operators who are members of A.B.T.A.
These arrangements already take effect, though a period of grace until 1st November, 1966, is allowed to existing agents of A.B.T.A. tour operators, provided they undertake during that period not to sell tours produced by non-A.B.T.A. members and to pay to the A.B.T.A. common fund the minimum contribution currently required of A.B.T.A. members. To ensue that firms now wishing to join A.B.T.A. are not prevented from doing so on grounds other than insolvency or the employment of inadequately qualified staff, A.B.T.A. is setting up a Membership Arbitration Panel of three people, one a representative of the Association and the other two, including the chairman, independent persons of standing outside the travel industry—I understand that the persons in mind are General Sir Malcolm Cartwright-Taylor and Mr. F. W. Beney, Q.C. A.B.T.A. tells us that about 50 firms from the T.T.A's two northern


branches are in process of being admitted to membership and that "hundreds" of applications from other retail firms, some of them no doubt T.T.A. members, are already under consideration.
I have recently received several representations about the operation stabiliser scheme from those who fear that it might tend to create a closed shop in a trade where initiative, enterprise, imagination and new ideas are essential. I have answered such representations on the following lines. A.B.T.A.'s scheme, which will come fully into effect next year, is certainly likely in practice to confine the organisation and retailing of virtually all inclusive tours to places outside the British Isles to tour operators and travel agents in membership of the Association. A.B.T.A., however, claims that the scheme is a necessary complement to the establishment of a reserve fund for protecting the customers of member firms in case any firm defaults financially after a client has booked and paid for a holiday. It disclaims any intention to stifle competition from financially sound firms

with experienced staff, and so far we have no reason for challenging their disclaimer.
I am watching this development most closely and I want to inform the House that we have the right, if it so needs exercising, either to legislate or to refer it to the Monopolies Commission if it tends to develop in a most undesirable way.

Mr. H. Hynd: I have less than one minute. I must declare a small interest. I want to emphasise that the Minister of State seems to overlook the fact that this, as he says, Stabiliser, is in operation. In the meantime this amalgamation has not taken place. Therefore, many firms outside A.B.T.A. will be shut out from the opportunity of booking tours through A.B.T.A. tour operators. It is very unfair——

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.